Take a photographic journey through Black Country urbanity with artist Tom Hicks

Tom Hicks is a multidisciplinary artist with a passion for exploring the visual culture of the Black Country. His newest publication, coming soon from the Modernist Society, is Black Country Type II, a photographic exploration of the more idiosyncratic aspects of the West Midlands.

Flip through the pages of ‘Black Country Type II’

The second book in Hicks’ journey around the landscape, Black Country Type II is now crowd-funding. This preview of the finished product gives some insight into the artist’s approach, landscape photography that combines a keen eye for colour, detail and idiosyncratic signage, with a desire to create an unvarnished chronicle of a region.

All of the 100-plus images of the book tackle the region’s built environment, from the elaborate to the quotidian, the successful and the failed. Hicks prefers to cycle and walk, creating freeform routes around places like Wolverhampton, Dudley, Walsall and Cradley Heath, allowing for fortuitous discoveries.

‘The book continues my ongoing exploration of my native region,’ Hicks says. ‘The Black Country is still a relatively unknown area, even to those that live there. I’m endlessly fascinated by the landscape, atmosphere and humour of the place.’

The book itself is presented, straight-faced, in the manner of a vintage product catalogue. Hicks has made a habit of collecting such publications, many of which date back to the manufacturing heyday of the region, presented in elaborate hard-backed format.

This attention to detail reinforces the book’s status as a very personal chronicle of an ongoing journey, a celebration of the obscure and the overlooked.

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From Black Country Type II, Tom Hicks

From Black Country Type II, Tom Hicks

From Black Country Type II, Tom Hicks

From Black Country Type II, Tom Hicks

From Black Country Type II, Tom Hicks

‘Creating Black Country Type II has been a special experience. For an artist, working on a book is the perfect opportunity to reflect, create new work and to present images in way that draws the viewer into an unfamiliar world,’ says Hicks.

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From Black Country Type II, Tom Hicks

From Black Country Type II, Tom Hicks

From Black Country Type II, Tom Hicks

From Black Country Type II, Tom Hicks

Black Country Type II by Tom Hicks, £40, The Modernist

The book can be supported at CrowdFunder.co.uk, The-Modernist.org, @TheModernist