Phil Loach was, for almost 50 years starting in 1969, a staff photographer at local newspapers in the West Midlands, including the Dudley Herald, the Stourbridge News and the Kidderminster Shuttle. Alongside his daily press output, he took thousands of personal documentary photographs on the streets he’d known from childhood. This picture, of a crowd of punters trying to get a glimpse of Red Rum’s challenge for a record-breaking third Grand National in the window of a TV rental shop, is typical of Loach’s eye for everyday drama and quiet comedy. It also recalls a time when great sporting moments were to be experienced in the moment or not at all – before the advent of video recorders, let alone a screen in every pocket. Red Rum came in second; he was victorious the following year.
The photograph is included in a book of Loach’s work, The Black Country 1970s-1980s. The pictures create an intimate portrait of those years when the small-scale iron and steelworks, on which the industrial communities around Dudley had been based, were closing down and youth unemployment was on the rise. You see some of that generational divide in the styles on display at the Granada shop: postwar overcoats and suit trousers compete with four-button waistbands and jean jackets.
Phil Loach died last year, aged 73. His wife, Dot Byrne, described him to the BBC as “a photographer through and through – even around the house there was always a camera within easy reach”. He had been thrilled to have his archive of photographs accepted for publication in a book; the sadness was that he did not live to see the finished copy. Loach was a born observer, Byrne recalled. “He saw things that other people wouldn’t see, let alone have the nerve to photograph.”
The Black Country 1970s-1980s is published by Café Royal Books (£6.70)
