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Photographic CulturesMass Observation: Then and NowThe era of the worker-photographer in the first quarter of the 20th century saw groups forming across Europe and Russia in an attempt to raise awareness of working class issues in the face of 'bourgeois picture-lies' about social and working conditions at the time. Whilst it was easy to take photographs in a domestic context, these protest groups were less successful in recording evidence in factories and other work places. Photographers such as Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897-1966) became known for his images of industrial landscapes and artefacts, such as his Flatirons for Shoe Manufacture (1926):
In the UK, the desire to record the everyday life of ordinary folk materialised in the Mass Observation Project in 1937. Headed by a group of dissidents , Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings, the project's aim was to create an 'anthropology of ourselves' - a study of the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain. At first, teams of paid observers recorded people's behaviour and conversations wherever they could - on the street, in the workplace, during leisure activities and so on. The emphasis was on getting as wide a picture as possible of the social contexts in which people lived and the issues which concerned them by observing collective behaviour patterns. (Later, as the project evolved in the 1950s, the focus shifted towards the behaviour of the people as 'consumers'.) There was also a 'National Panel' of people from all over the UK who wrote diaries or responded to questionnaires set by the project officers. (The project, having folded for a while, was relaunched in the 1980s and is still going strong. Members of the public (myself included) are invited to contribute written material in response to 'directives' form the project organisers.) In addition to the written evidence gathered by the observers, photographic records were taken by Humphrey Spender, Julian Trevelyan and others. This eveolved into a sub-project - Worktown - a mythical name given to a study of the towns of Bolton and Blackpool between 1937 and 1940. Spender, a newspaper journalist, travelled across the industrial north taking some 900 photographs in all. Whilst much of this work remained unpublished, those images which did see the light of day provide a rich source of material for anyone wishing to understand what life was like in working class areas on Britain in the between-the-war years. Spender was not entirely comfortable with his voyeuristic role. In 1978, he said: "My main anxiety, purpose, was to become invisible and to make my equipment invisible, which is one of the reasons I carried around an absolute minimum of equipment... Summing up the relics of feelings towards Mass Observation I think I can remember the main enemy being boredom and tedium and embarrassment." Spender, H. 1978, cited in Wells, L. Photography, a Critical Introduction, p91. Another photographer involved in the Mass Observation project was Julian Trevelyan (1910-1988), who saw a correlation between surrealism what the MO project was aiming to record. Primarily a printmaker, he was also interested in photographing everyday life. Trevelyan (who, during World War II declared his religion to be Surrealism) tried to uncover patterns of behaviour which are not immediately obvious. During the MO project he also produced mixed media collages.
Something about Humphrey Spender's photographs from the Mass Observation Project look strangely familiar to me. I've seen them many times before, of course, but whenever I look at them I feel like I've actually been there... I took a fairly random selection of Spender's work and then trawled through my own archives to see if I had anything like his images. The results took me by surprise; it seems I have a similar penchant for recording the everyday activities of city life: (click on thumbnails for larger image in new window)
Interior Reading Room - Silence Please
Millennium Library Norwich
Open Market - Shoppers
French Market, Norwich
Railway Station - Waiting for a Train
Liverpool Street Station London
Wasteland as Children's Playground
Oscar Plays in the Gravel
Queen's Park
Roma Park So... were Spender's motives for photographing these scenes the same as mine? Did we have any similarity of experience? Is it no more exotic than that there nothing new under the sun in documentary photography? This is not a contrived exercise - these images were just sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to make the correlation. Spender had a brief, of course. He was part of a project with specific aims, whereas I am just a voyeur. He always said he felt uncomfortable taking his photographs, despite his unobtrusive Leica. I use a much larger DSLR with a noisy shutter and huge zoom lens and yes, I do feel conspicuous, but I don't feel uncomfortable. This might be a matter of personality, or it might have something to do with the different social climates in which we operate: Spender's between-the-wars world was far less media-savvy and technologically blasé than mine is. In an attempt to come to explore my own voyeuristic tendencies I have been taking photographs of people who are unaware of my presence (like I often do, but this time with a more analytical approach to my feelings about the task). The results can be seen here. Web References All sites accessed and working 25/02/06 Mass Observation Project University of Sussex Special Collections Library Humphrey Spender's Photographs for Worktown. Bolton Museums. Art and Documentary in Britain, 1929 to Now. Tate Liverpool Bibliography Marien, Mary Warner. Photography, a Cultural History. pub. Laurence King 2002. Wells, L. Photography, a Critical Introduction. 3rd Ed. pub London. Routledge 2004
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(C) Helen Williams 2006 |
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