The hardest look is plain

Deadpan pictures of ordinary places can seem like anyone could take them. Resisting the wide angle, the dramatic crop and the filter is the discipline that makes it look that easy.

“making things look easy is actually a devilishly difficult skill to master”

Twelve frames in a museum cafe

Tom Hicks works as Black Country Type. Twelve of his images now hang in the cafe space at Black Country Living Museum in Dudley, eight miles northwest of Birmingham.

A rock legend wrote the foreword

The pictures come from his second book, Black Country Type II, published by The Modernist. Robert Plant wrote the introduction, and that is what people will notice first.

“the surreal madness and magnificence of our old mothership with a keen eye and quiet wit”

How they actually met

Hicks was asked to curate a photo exhibition for one of Plant's shows at The Halls in Wolverhampton. The singer, 300 million records in, has followed his work since.

No nostalgia, no misery

A smashed-shuttered snooker club in Lye sits beside joyful PIES lettering on corrugated steel in Tipton, and MENTAL spelled across a blue unit in Netherton with cloud drifting past.

“cloud drifting past like a punchline”

Control you can see

Flat, even light. Subjects dead center or hard against blue sky. Color used with precision. It owes something to New Topographics and Ed Ruscha's LA signage, relocated to Dudley.

Shoot what nobody photographs

The most photogenic thing near you probably is not the landmark. Patient, consistent attention to dull subjects is what turns snapshots into a body of work worth a museum wall.