Side Gallery’s Archive Photographer of the Week is Dave Thomas, with a fine set of black and white images of the Appleby Horse Fair which he took in 1969-70 and were acquired by Side in 2000.
It’s sad however that these a perhaps only being shown because Thomas, born just outside of Glasgow in 1940 and a graduate in painting from Glasgow School of Art in 1962, died last month. Like many of us in the early 1960s he was inspired by the ‘New Wave’ French and Italian cinema, which led him to his own black and white photography.
After working as a freelance in Glasgow he got a job teaching photography at Leeds College of Art in 1968, which required him to spend a part of his paid hours as a practising professional, giving him the opportunity for a number of documentary projects in Yorkshire and the north of England, of which the annual horse fair in Appleby, Westmoreland was one. Later he went back to freelance work, and then again into teaching. But I think there are relatively few teaching jobs now which would be set up to pay photographers to continue their photography alongside teaching.
Some of the pictures are also for sale at the Equestrian Gallery, where his photographs stand out alongside “prints, paintings and sculpture by a selection of the most talented artists in the field.”
Also on Side you can see his documentation of the Blue Circle cement works at Eastgate in Weardale, County Durham, 1991.