Ian Macdonald took this picture of the canteen women at a blast furnace plant in Redcar, on the north-east coast of England, in 1983. He had been “embedded” at the ironworks for several months, following the shifts of a particular group of men at the plant. He didn’t take so many pictures in the canteen, but this is among his favourites – the cover image of the catalogue of his prints in a new exhibition of his work at the Flow Photographic Gallery in London.

Talking about it, he recalls the freedom of that moment at the end of the women’s day, the chairs stacked, the floors mopped; that delicious brief licence to have a gossip and a laugh before heading home to kids and husbands and problems. Macdonald has always loved impressionist paintings, and you can maybe see some of that in the way the light falls on the teapots and crockery and the women’s easy smiles, the gestures of listening and half listening. That shared intimacy was part of a way of life that Macdonald had grown up with. “There was a dignity,” he says, “and it was about recognising that.”