Photography as an agent of transformation: education, community and documentary photography in post-war Britain

Abstract

Radical political activism in the 1970s and 1980s had a huge impact on documentary photography in Britain. Community organisations and photography collectives emerged and endeavoured to democratise the arts for those who would not otherwise have come into contact with them. Community photography used the technology to break down the barriers between artist and audience. It involved participation in the production of ideas and meanings, the active transference of skills and the acquisition of technical and aesthetic skills within communities in the hope that arts techniques/activity would become an integral part of everyday lives. For many of the projects the central objective was about learning – enabling an understanding of how events, ideas, and social relations are made meaningful through the promotion of visual literacy. This paper will document the emergence of the community photography movement in 1970s and ’80s Britain, the learning strategies developed and the arguments around the fragmenting of alternative photographic practice in the 1980s with the movement away from putting cameras into people’s hands towards greater engagement with cultural theory and the politics of representation.

Keywords:

• photography
• representation
• community
• informal education

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the photographers Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr for permission to use their photographs in this article.

Notes

¹⁵ For further details see Braden, Committing Photography, 81.

¹⁶ See Gilane Tawadros, “Who Needs Anti-Racist Approaches to Photography?,” Ten: 8, no. 34 (1989): 48–51. The pack, Whose Image? Anti-Racist Approaches to Photography and Visual Literacy included material by photographers Pratibha Parmar, Roshini Kempadoo and Tarik Chawdry.

¹ Wim Wenders in conversation with P.W. Jansen, “The Truth of Images,” in Wim Wenders, The Act of Seeing: Essays and Conversations (London: Faber & Faber, 1997), 52.

² S. King, “Making Mansions,” in Remaking Birmingham: The Visual Culture of Urban Regeneration, ed. Liam Kennedy (Abingdon: Routledge 2004), 57–67.

³ Steve Bezencenet, “Bootle Arts and Action,” in Photographic Practices: Towards a Different Image, ed. Stevie Bezencenet and Philip Corrigan (London: Comedia, 1986), 155.

⁴ John Tagg, “The World of Photography or Photography of the World,” in The Camerawork Essays: Context and Meaning in Photography, ed. Jessica Evans (London: River Oram Press, 1997), 65.

⁵ Su Braden, Committing Photography (London: Pluto Press, 1983).

⁶ Ibid., 87.

⁷ Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs (New York: Hill & Wang, 1989), xiv.

⁸ See, for instance, John Tagg, The Burden of Representation (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989); Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Photography at the Dock (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1991); Suren Lalvani, Photography, Vision, and the Production of Modern Bodies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996); Elizabeth Edwards, Raw Histories (Oxford: Berg, 2001) and “Images and Inequalities: Implications for Policy and Research,” ed. Janet Fink and Helen Lomax, themed issue of Critical Social Policy 32, no. 1 (2012).

⁹ Kathy Myers, “Camerawork,” in Photographic Practices: Towards a Different Image, ed. Stevie Bezenencenet and Philip Corrigan (London: Comedia, 1986), 85–99.

¹⁰ John Tagg, “The Silent Picture Show,” in Photographic Practices, ed. Bezenencenet and Corrigan, 112.

¹¹ Camerawork 1976. Thirty-two issues of Camerawork were published between 1976 and 1985.

¹² Braden, Committing Photography, 69.

¹³ Val Williams and Susan Bright, How We Are: Photographing Britain (London: Tate, 2007), 137.

¹⁴ Nicholas Saunders, Alternative England and Wales (London: Nicholas Saunders, 1975).

¹⁷ Phillippa Goodall, “The Birmingham Context,” in Sharp Voices: Still Lives, ed. Tess Sidey (Manchester: Cornerhouse Publications, 1990), 53.

¹⁸ Bezencenet, “Photography and the Community,” in Photographic Practices, ed. Bezencenet and Corrigan, 142.

¹⁹ Saunders, Alternative England and Wales, 11.

²⁰ Library of Birmingham: Archives, WELD Annual Report, 1980.

²¹ Kat Gollock, “The Filth and the Fury,” Variant 43 (Spring 2012): 4.

²² Andrew Dewdney, “That was Then, This is Now: the Legacy of Ten: 8,” Photographies 4, no. 2 (2011): 262–63.

²³ David Alan Mellor, No Such Thing as Society (London: Hayward, 2007), 51.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Ibid. Examples of Burke’s photographs from the 1970s and 1980s can be found in Mark Sealy, ed., Vanley Burke: A Retrospective (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1993) and Lydia Morris, ed., Vanley Burke: By the Rivers of Birmingham (Birmingham: MAC, 2012).

²⁶ Stuart Hall, “Vanley Burke and the ‘Desire for Blackness’,” in Vanley Burke: A Retrospective, 12.

²⁷ Goodall, “The Birmingham Context,” 57.

²⁸ Nick Hedges and Huw Beynon, Born to Work (London: Pluto Press, 1982), 6.

²⁹ Camerawork, 13, 1979.

³⁰ Carol Dix, “Moss Side Story,” Guardian, May 22, 1971, 5.

³¹ Shirley Baker, Street Photographs: Manchester and Salford (Hexham: Bloodaxe Publishing, 1989); Mellor No Such Thing as Society, 96–97.

³² Shirley Baker, “Lowry at Tate Britain,” TATE ETC 28 (Summer 2013): 58–59.

³³ Mellor, No Such Thing as Society, 84.

³⁴ Punk rock bands created fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political and anti-establishment lyrics. New Romantics was a reaction to punk rock and was heavily influenced by David Bowie and Roxy Music. See, Jon Savage, England’s Dream: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock (London: Faber & Faber, 1991); Peter Childs and Mike Storry, eds., Encyclopedia of Contemporary British Culture (London: Routledge, 1999); and T. Cateforis, Are We Not New Wave? Modern Pop at the Turn of the 1980s (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011).

³⁵ David Chadwick/We were All There, Once/ Cornerhouse, http://www.cornerhouse.org/art/art-exhibitions (accessed August 2013).

³⁶ Val Williams, Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 1970s and 80s (Brighton: Photoworks), 30.

³⁷ Ibid., 38–40.

³⁸ Daniel Meadows, Living Like This: Around Britain in the Seventies (London: Arrow Books, 1975), 11–14.

³⁹ Guy Lane, “‘The Photographer as Recorder’: Daniel Meadows, Records, Discourse and Tradition in 1970s England,” Photographies 4, no. 2 (2011): 168.

⁴⁰ One of his photographs, “Portsmouth: John Payner, Aged 12, with Two Friends and his Pigeon, Chequer, 26 April 1974,” became one of the most reproduced images sponsored by the Arts Council, Mellor, No Such Thing As Society, x.

⁴¹ Audrey Linkman and Bill Williams, “Recovering the People’s Past: The Archive Rescue Programme of Manchester Studies,” History Workshop Journal 8, no. 1 (1979): 112.

⁴² Ibid., 118–19.

⁴³ Stevie Besencenet and Haim Bresheeth, “Photographic Archives,” in Photographic Practices, ed. Bezencenet and Corrigan, 63.

⁴⁴ Linkman and Williams, “Recovering the People’s Past,” 121.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Martin Parr and G. Badger, The Photobook: A History, vol. 1 (London: Phaidon, 2004), 118.

⁴⁷ Quoted in Ian Grosvenor and Ali Hall, “‘Back to school from a holiday in the slums!’ Images, Words and Inequalities,” Critical Social Policy 32, no. 1 (2012): 23–5.

⁴⁸ It is worth noting that in Manchester for example in the 1890s “photograph clubs” were organised in streets and factories on the model of “money clubs”, where members paid a small amount each week “for the opportunity of recording a chosen individual or group”, Linkman and Williams, “Recovering the People’s Past,” 121.

⁴⁹ Terry Dennett “England: The (Workers’) Film and Photo League,” in Photography Politics: One, ed. Terry Dennett and Jo Spence (London: Photography Workshop, 1979), 100–17.

⁵⁰ Lynda Morris and Robert Radford, The Story of the Artists International Association 1933–1953 (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, 1983).

⁵¹ Quoted in Dennett “England: The (Workers’) Film and Photo League,” 106.

⁵² See, for example, Dennett “England: The (Workers’) Film and Photo League,” 100–17 and Camerawork 19, July 1980 which includes a feature on the work of Elizabeth Tudor Hart.

⁵³ Guy Brett, “The Art of the Matter,” City Limits, November–December, 1981 quoted in Walker, Left Shift, 2.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 3.

⁵⁵ Terry Grimley, “Introduction,” Birmingham Arts Lab (Birmingham: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 1998), n.p.

⁵⁶ “Ted Little,” Independent, September 6, 1999; Birmingham Arts Lab.

⁵⁷ Swansea based.

⁵⁸ Birmingham based.

⁵⁹ For background on Centreprise see Local Publishing and Local Culture: An Account of the Work of the Centreprise Publishing Project 1972–1977 (London: Centreprise Trust, 1977).

⁶⁰ See, for example, Graham Jameson, On the Roof, n.d.

⁶¹ Braden, Committing Photograph, 82.

⁶² Gollock, “The Filth and the Fury,” 4. See also David Ellis, “Taking Control of the Past: Grassroots Activism, the Academy and the Community History Movement in Urban Britain” (conference paper, Unofficial Histories conference, Bishopsgate Institute, London, May 19, 2012).

⁶³ Daniel Meadows, in interview with Natasha Macnab, 8 March 2013. The free university operated at the Nello James Centre between 1971 and 1972, Val Williams, “The Daniel Meadows Archive: The Shop on Greame Street, 1972,” Photography and Culture 3, no. 1 (2010): 81. See also “Daniel Meadows on Digital Literacy,” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-15717619 (accessed August 2013).

⁶⁴ Williams, Daniel Meadows, 9.

⁶⁵ Bezencenet, “Photography and the Community,” 144–45.

⁶⁶ Ten: 8, Editorial “Restricted Practices,” no. 7/8 (1982): 5.

⁶⁷ Gollock, “The Filth and the Fury,” 5.

⁶⁸ Myers, “Camerawork,” 89.

⁶⁹ Jessica Evans, “Introduction,” The Camerawork Essays (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1997), 17.

⁷⁰ Ibid. See also Braden, Committing Photography, 106–08.

⁷¹ “Photography in the Community,” Camerawork 13 (March 1979): n.p.

⁷² Noni Stacey, “Community Photography in Britain in the 1970s: Photography, Pedagogy and Dreams,” archivemagazine (2010): n.p., http://www.archivemagazine.org.uk/?p=515 (accessed July 2013).

⁷³ Gollock, “The Filth and the Fury,” 3.

⁷⁴ E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1968), 13.

⁷⁵ Salman Rushdie, “Introduction,” in Derek Bishton and John Reardon, Home Front (London: Jonathan Cape 1984), 7.

⁷⁶ Bezencenet, “Photography and the Community,” 138–39.

⁷⁷ Braden, Committing Photography, 30, 72–76.

⁷⁸ Terry Dennett and Jo Spence, “Ten Years of Photography Workshop,” in Photographic Practices, ed. Bezenencenet and Corrigan, 13–28.

⁷⁹ Peter Marshall, “The Repackaging of 1970s British Photography,” Visual Anthropology Review 14, no. 1 (1998): 92.

⁸⁰ Paul Trevor, “The Camerawork Essays,” http://www.buildingoflondon.co.uk/pm/lip/mar98/ptrev.htm (accessed August 2013).

⁸¹ Stacey, “Community Photography,” n.p.

⁸² Ibid.

⁸³ Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).

⁸⁴ See S. Nixon and P. de Guy, “Who Needs Cultural Intermediaries?” Cultural Studies 16, no. 4 (2002): 495–500.

⁸⁵ For details of the research project see http://culturalintermediation.wordpress.com/about/

⁸⁶ Williams, Daniel Meadows, 9.

⁸⁷ Daniel Meadows, in interview with Natasha Macnab, 8 March 2013.

⁸⁸ Meadows, Living Like This, 14.

⁸⁹ Ariella Azoulay, Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography (London: Verso, 2012), 44, 56.

⁹⁰ Lane, “The Photographer as Recorder,” 169–70.