Living Room

British photographer Nick Waplington spent four years documenting the daily lives of two working-class families in a Nottingham (UK) neighborhood. Rather than accepting the contemporary photographic conventions of social realism, Waplington recorded the lives of these families, capturing an intimate narrative with sadness and unexpected humor. The photos were taken in the late 1980s, following ten years of Conservative rule, the collapse of industry, rising poverty and unemployment. The two families photographed by Waplington had been living witnesses to that difficult time.