Photography and the Visualization of Working Class Lives in Britain · 2010. 4. 11. · memory. The creative drive of independent pho-tography during the second half of this century

PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE VISUALIZATION

OF WORKING CLASS LIVES IN BRITAINDARREN NEWBURY

LOOKING AT WORKING CLASS LIVES

Working class lives have been of continual interestto middle and upper class audiences since at least thenineteenth century. Photographic representations ofworking class life have an equally long history, doingjustice to which would take considerably more spacethan is available to me in this paper. It is importanthowever to recognize that the images I intend to discusscan be situated in an historical context. Indeed, it is partof my argument that photographic representations canonly really be understood in relation to other represen-tations, both those that serve as historical points ofreference and those that occupy the same contemporarycultural space. Photographic representations both drawfrom and contribute to a social and cultural imagery thatis part of a broader public dialogue about society.Documentary photography becomes part of the way inwhich societies inform themselves about their ownidentities and values and those of other cultures andsocieties.

The practical focus of this paper is photographicrepresentations of working-class life in Britain, primarilyfrom the mid 1970s to the early 1990s, though somereference will be made to earlier work. Aside from itsintrinsic interest, this focus is valuable for the oppor-tunity it provides to explore a number of theoreticalissues. Although there are significant variations acrossthe different examples I will discuss, there are also arange of common concerns. First, social and culturalreference is fundamental to an understanding of theworks discussed here. The photographers are quiteconsciously concerned with representing historicallyand culturally specific ways of life. For most of theexamples, this places the images firmly within anationalcontext and an explicit politics of representation. Someof the work discussed here shares a common aim withwhat Clifford refers to as "salvage ethnography" (cited

in Stanley 1998:16), to save both visually, and literally insome cases (through a belief that images will change theminds of politicians), communities that are about todisappear. Konttinen's Byker for example, can be seenas one of a number of photographic studies of the impactof urban renewal in Britain in the wake of the 1954Housing Act (Jobling 1993). Ironically, the threat tocommunities and traditional ways of life is no longerindustrialization but its dissipation in a post-industrial era:

Any documentary project is, in the end, aboutmemory. The creative drive of independent pho-tography during the second half of this century hasbeen sparked by a painful sense of the disappear-ance of communities. There has been a race torecord them and their ways of life before and in theprocess of a destruction that can only be describedas wilful. (Side 1995: 6)

Second, there are a number of methodologicalcommitments made by the photographers that drawupon anthropological paradigms. Most straightfor-wardly, much of the work depends on the kind of long-term engagement that is typical of ethnographic field-work. The validity claims of documentary are oftensupported by a discussion of the makers' sustainedengagement and understanding of the subject. Forexample, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen' s documentary photo-graphic study of the North East community at Byker(Konttinen 1988) is based on several years of living andphotographing in the area.1 There are of course someinteresting counter examples. Despite the influence ofanthropology,2 Humphrey Spender's photographic docu-mentation of Bolton as part of the Mass Observationproject in Britain in the 1930s was based on as little asfive or six visits to the town, each lasting not much morethan a week at the most.3 Spender himself has com-mented at length on his position as a stranger on such

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 15 Number 1 Spring-Summer 1999 21

HUMPHREY SPENDER

These two images are from Spender's MassObservation work in Bolton and are repro-duced in Spender & Mulford 1982 under thecategory Work' The categorization in the1982 publication follows to some extent thecategorization used in the 1975 publication,though it is much less journalistic both in thesection titles and in the visual style; "It was alovely funeral" becomes 'Funeral", The Lo-cal" becomes "Drinking" Perhapsunsurprisingly, the most recent major publica-tion of Spender's images (Fnzzell 1997recontextualises the images again, in thiscase structunng them chronologically, and byimplication placing Spender's developmentas an artist centrally.

Woman Scrubbing Doorstep, Bolton, 1937 (reproduced courtesy of BoltonMuseum and Art Gallery)

Baby Getting a Bath, Bolton 1937 (reproduced courtesy of BoltonMuseum and Art Gallery)

The latter image is the only domes-tic interior in the Mass Observationwork and was the result of a requestfrom someone working for MassObservation rather than being initi-ated by the photographer. Spenderhad previously photographed suc-cessfully in the home of a family inStepney, to provide evidence of liv-ing conditions fora probation officerHe describes his approach then asone of spending many days with thefamily in order to make his presenceas unobtrusive as possible (Spender& Mulford 1982:16). However, TomHarrisson's preference for a meth-odology of covert observation pre-cluded Spender producing manysuch images in the work for MassObservation,

22 Volume 15 Number 1 Spring-Summer 1999 Visual Anthropology Review

London, Stepney, 1934. Taken for probation services and magistrate Sir William Clarke-Hall(reproduced courtesy of the photographer).

Tyneside Slums, 1939 (reproduced courtesy of theHulton Getty Picture Collection) This last image wastaken on the second of Spender's visits to Tynesidefor Picture Post, when he was accompanied by thecity architect (left) at the request of the mayor whohad complained of the bias in the first Picture Postreport. See The Lord Mayor of Newcastle Show UsTyneside,' Picture Post March 1939.


photographic expeditions, and the recurrent social awk-wardness of his photographic encounters. Furthermore,a number of the more recent photographers discussedare recording their own communities and lives. Thisreflects, more or less consciously depending on theparticular example, a questioning of the legitimacy ofthe conventional approach to documentary fieldwork inwhich there is a clear demarcation between those beinglooked at and those doing the looking; though most of theexamples discussed here retain a strong commitmentto realism, to the notion that it is possible to representother people's lives and that there is some value in doingso. In some respects, then, the work can be consideredas insider accounts or forms of indigenous ethnogra-phy.

The period is of particular interest for two reasons.First, it represents a period of political and socialchange and a restructuring of class relations in Britain.In the early seventies working-class institutions such asthe trade unions represented a powerful political force,and, for working-class men at least, images of manuallabor often had a powerful and celebratory appeal. Thiswould not be the case for long.4 In the 1990s images ofworking class life have been predominantly seen asnegative and often associated with the past. SuccessiveBritish Prime Ministers (Conservative and Labor) havedeclared the end of class conflict, cementing its currentunfashionability as a critical category in the discussionof contemporary life. What is interesting when one looksacross the documentary photographic work of theperiod is a shift from an explicitly politicized represen-tation of class that characterized some of the work in theearly 1970s, for example work associated with the earlyCamerawork, towards a more cultural rendering ofworking class life. The vision embodied in the work ofPaul Trevor, Nicholas Battye and Chris Steele-Perkinsin Survival Programmes arguably has more of thedesperate tone of nineteenth century social explorers toit, than any sense of class transformation, ending as itdoes in an apocalyptic series of images of street conflictacross the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, it attemptsto offer in visual form an analysis of working classpoverty as the product of capitalist economic relations:"Documentary photographers have traditionally beenconcerned with 'the human condition'. But to documenta condition is not to explain it. The condition is asymptom, not a cause; more precisely, it is the outcomeof a process. Therefore, in the way we present the

material in this book we are as much concerned toindicate processes as to record conditions" (Exit 1982:7).5 Laterwork, for example Tom Wood's documentary

account of bus travel in Liverpool, records in increas-ingly close detail the texture of working class life (Wood1998). There has also been a notable shift during thisperiod away from working class life as a subject fordocumentary practice. The notion of a consumersociety became central to public debate in Britain duringthe 1980s, which has meant that what is seen asculturally salient subject matter for the documentaryphotographer has tended to move, with some notableexceptions, towards those who have the resources toparticipate most actively. Associated with the change inthe focus of concern for documentary is the break in thelink between photographic documentary and socialdemocratic politics established in the postwar period,and evident most clearly on the pages of Picture Post,within which the display of poverty was viewed as a steptowards building a consensus for social and welfarereform (cf. Hall 1972).

The period is interesting in terms of the develop-ment of a relatively autonomous photographic culturethat both sustained and justified a documentary practice.This was a result of two main factors, the decision inthe early 1970s of the Arts Council of Great Britain tobegin supporting photography as an art form, and theestablishment of arelatively secure base for photographyin higher education. Up until that point documentaryphotography was either synonymous with photojour-nalism, Humphrey Spender for example does notdistinguish between photojournalism and documentary,6

or was sustained as a semi-amateur activity, for exampleMargaret Monck's work in the East End of London,Shirley Baker's work in Salford or Jimmy Forsyth'sdocumentation of the area around Scotswood Road inNewcastle (Forsyth 1986). The work of Euan Duff isof some significance in this respect as he was a photog-rapher who sought to work in a sustained documentarymode as opposed to the shorter term commitmentinvolved in photojournalism, where he began his career.Duff published a book length study of life in 1960sBritain (Duff 1971), pointedly tided How we are, andalso collaborated with sociologist Dennis Marsden on astudy of unemployment (Marsden 1975).7 Although,Duff continued to photograph during the period inwhich he worked in photographic higher education,very little of this work has been published or exhibited.


The commitment over this period to publishingdocumentary photographs in book form, often sup-ported financially by the British Arts Council, has con-tributed to the dissemination of this work and its value asa public resource of social and cultural memory. It isinteresting that the institutional success of photographyhas also led to a greater emphasis on the individualpractitioners. One of the problems, as Becker (1986)would recognize, of discussing these photographerswithin a sociological or anthropological context is thatit is more often to the institutions of the photographic artworld that they look for validation, than the academy ofsocial science.

While I am writing from a British context it is alsoimportant to realize that many of the images discussedhave also been circulated internationally. As a Britishunderstanding of what the 1930s depression in theUnited States looked like has been informed by thephotographic work of the Farm Security Administration,so an international view of British working class life inthe 1980s has, for those without any other experience torely upon, been interpreted through the images of NickWaplington, Chris Killip and others.8

In order to focus my discussion of photographicwork in this period, I want to consider two particularmoments. First, the emergence of a collaborative andsustained approach to documentary practice in the1970s. In particular I want to consider the body of workthat was developed around the Amber/Side group inNewcastle. Second, I want to consider how and why thevisual concerns and the approach of photographers tothe documentation of working class lif e appeared to shiftaway from this position during the 1980s.

A COLLABORATIVE DOCUMENTARY PRACTICE IN THE

NORTH EAST OF ENGLAND

In 1968 a group of documentary filmmakersand photographers at the Central London Polytechniccame together to form the Amber Associates. Theformation of a collective was motivated by the desire tocarry on working collaboratively, and importantly towork outside of the mainstream film industry, once theyfinished studying. A central aim of the group was todevelop a film and photographic practice amongst

working class communities in the North East of En-gland.9 For anumber of the group the move to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, an industrial city in the North East, was areturn home, for others the appeal was perhaps moresymbolic. Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, a member of thegroup originally from Finland, makes the followingobservation: "The choice of a northern working classcity was for most of our members a way of returning totheir own roots - for the others the North East held awarm attraction, which led to a lasting commitment tothe region" (Konttinen 1989:5).

Central to the photographic work of Amber was theSide Gallery opened in Newcastle in 1977. The gallerycame out of the Amber group's frustration with the lackof venues in which to exhibit the kind of work that theywere producing, and as a way of bringing photographyto the region which they otherwise would not have theopportunity to see.10 Chris Killip, although not formallypart of the Amber collective, also became involved in therunning of the gallery. Killip came into contact with thegroup during his time in the North East working on afellowship funded by the Northern Arts and the North-ern Gas Board, and developed a close working relation-ship with the group during this period. Killip had alreadypublished a documentary study of the Isle of Man, andbeen funded by the Arts Council of Great Britain to workon a project documenting British cities. The approachto the gallery, as articulated by Killip and Murray Martin(a founder member of Amber), was informed by acommitment to the communities of the region both as asubject and audience of visual work. The gallery alsosought to place the regionally based documentary workin the context of a history of socially engaged photo-graphic practice. This was signalled by the choice of thework of American social reform photographer LewisHine for the first exhibition, accompanied by a publica-tion based on the layout of the popular national news-paper, the Daily Mirror.11 The vision was of a gallerythat was both populist and interventionist, with a pro-gram that was of direct relevance to the area, at the sametime as fostering international connections. As early as1974('The River Project'), and before Killip's involve-ment, the Amber group had begun commissioningartists, writers and photographers to work on documen-tary projects. Once the gallery was established, the

Darren Newbury is currently research co-ordinatorfor visual communication at Birmingham Institute of Art and DesignUniversity of Central England. Hecompleted his PhDon the theory and practice of photographic education in 1995 andhas published in the areas of photographic education, research education and training and visual research


raising of funding to commission photographers todocument aspects of the region, and the development ofaphotographic archive, became an important part of thework.12 Unlike some community based photographicpractices that were being developed at the time, such asthose discussed by De Cuyper (1997), the work at Sidewas not primarily about putting cameras in the hands ofordinary community members, though it did promotethe work of local photographers. The practice was oneof professional image-makers developing work in dia-logue with communities. At the time, and since, this hasopened the work to criticism in the context of a politicsof representation that questioned the voyeurism ofdocumentary photography in general.

The aims of the group of photographers and film-maker that constituted Amber/Side can be understoodas involving both a methodological commitment todevelop visual work out of a sustained local engagement- "Our initial ambition as filmmaker and photographersto work collectively and produce documents of work-ing class life in the region, involving long-term relation-ships with local communities, has remained constant"(Side 1995) - and apolitical commitment to the represen-tation of the everyday and ordinary in the lives workingclass communities.

Methodologically, the work depended on a long-term involvement with the people and communitiesrepresented. Tish Murtha, one of the photographerscommissioned by Side Gallery, made a series of imagesof unemployed youth in the west end of Newcastle -"her angry photographs of young people on early youthemployment schemes involve some members of herown family (Side 1995).13 Konttinen had lived in Bykerfor two years before she began photographing there, andcontinued to live there until the street she lived in wasdemolished as part of the urban renewal process that shewas documenting. The documentary film Seacoalproduced by Amber Associates was the outcome oftwo years spent with the seacoaling community atLynemouth, also photographed by Killip. This does notmean of course that access to those communities wasunproblematic, or that the work produced was appreci-ated or even welcomed by members of those commu-nities. Killip's access to the seacoaling communitywhere he photographed in the early 1980s was the resultof serendipity rather than any recognition of value inwhat he was doing by those who he wanted to photo-graph. As Killip recounts the story, he had tried several

times to photograph on the beaches but had always beenchased away by the men there. Understandably, KilUp'spresence was perceived as unwelcome surveillanceand the fact that many of the men were claiming socialsecurity benefits meant that the circulation of photo-graphic images was a genuine threat. It was only whenone of the men recognized him from a previousmeeting at a fair, and agreed to take responsibility forhim on the beach that he was able to photograph insafety.14

The commitment involved in the work extendedbeyond the use of images as an adjunct to politicalcampaigns, say for better housing, such as those ofphotographers involved in projects in Merseyside(Bootle Art in Action) and London (Camerawork).Within individual photographic studies, as well as readingacross the work as a whole, one is offered a vision of theintegrity of working class communities and ways of life;the images are not simply about people as victims ofpoverty: 'The irony of Chris Killip's seacoal photo-graphs being used nationally, to illustrate poverty inthe UK, shows metropolitan culture's inability to readsome of this work. They are images of capitalism inthe raw, of a kind of freedom at the edges of ourcivilization, but they are not about poverty" (Side 1995:5). As a consequence of this kind of commitment thereis in much of the work produced by this looseassociation of photographers an interest in an aesthet-ics of social and cultural life. This is expressed indifferent ways, for example the work of Chris Killip(1988) represents a significant attempt to produce a kindof monumental imagery of Northern working class life.Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen on the other hand explores aquieter aesthetic, exemplified in her study of a dancingschool in North Shields, an aesthetic respite from every-day existence, published as Step by Step (Konttinen1989). As in the earlier Byker there is a concern todocument cultural aspects of the environment in whichpeople lived.

Konttinen's Byker is a complex piece of workcombining both images and text, and followed by a filmproduced by Konttinen in the same year as the book wasfirst published. The 115 images that make up the mainpart of the book are accompanied by three kinds of text:an introduction that reflects on the photographer's entryinto and relationship with the community; a postscriptthat reflects on the impact of the redevelopment; andinterspersed with the photographs are quotations taken


from conversations that Konttinen had heard and re-corded during the many years that she lived in the area.13

The two images that mark the entry into, and exitfrom, the main sequence are tightly framed photographsof the Byker rooftops, the former showing the old rowsof terraces, and the latter the rooftops of the newdeveloped Byker. The viewer is invited to reflect on thepatterns of life that the book reveals existed in the oldByker, and by implication to speculate on the newpatterns that are being established in the wake ofredevelopment. The photographs are a mixture offormal portraits as well as more informal documentaryimages taken in the streets, homes, and communityspaces in the area. Several of the images record interiors,drawing attention to the ways in which the occupantshad humanized and personalized their rooms with pho-tographs and other artifacts. A number of these imagesalso make reference to imaginative worlds beyond theharsh realities of daily existence. Many of the imagesrepresent spaces of leisure: men racing pigeons, youngpeople playing pool, the bookmakers, the bingo hall.There are very few images of men working, though anumber show women working (cleaning the step, thewash-house, the hairdressers). The book seems toalternate between suggesting a way of life which isreceding - the sequencing is punctuated by wider streetimages, which, as one moves through the book, showtheir gradual demolition - and bringing the viewer upclose to the day to day life of the people who live inByker, whose existence should not be ignored, andwhich is presented with a strong sense of its integrity.This is not to say that the image of working-class lifepresented is a uniform one, as Jobling notes the photo-graphs can be read in a number of ways: "In attemptingto decode these images, we become aware of theheterogeneity of working-class culture and of the plural-ity of life-styles embraced by it. Konttinen's photo-graphs teem not only with the signifiers of the populartastes of the time and place, the clashing patterns ofornate carpets and wallpaper for instance, but are alsorevealing barometers of social class and status" (Jobling1993: 257). However, the sense of the integrity andvalidity of a way of life is clearly importantto Konttinen'sview of the work and its audiences; she quotesscathingly a Newcastle city planning officer, who de-scribes the value of redevelopment as a means ofbreaking up communities of which he does not approve.

Importantly, though Konttinen was not just presentingher view of the way of life of the people of Byker forfuture town planners and others who had no understand-ing of the area, but also for the people of Byker them-selves: "people did believe what I was doing and that Iwas doing it, not as a service to the community as suchbut as a way of trying to understand how the communityworks and eventually trying to return that statement tothem, which I promised to do in the form of a book"(Martin 1983:1160). Photographs from the project arenow on permanent exhibition in Byker.

The photographic work of Chris Killip, as opposedto his involvement in the Side Gallery, is interesting forthe way in which it moves away from the kinds ofmethodological commitments of the Amber/Side groupand towards a greater emphasis on developing anaesthetics of working class life in the North of England.Killip was not formally a part of the Amber collective,and in terms of his practice placed a greater emphasis onhis own personal and artistic vision. Nevertheless, thework demands to be taken seriously as it provides someof the most powerful and widely disseminated visualrecords of working class life in this period. Although heworked on sustained documentary projects, Killip alsobrought to the work a particular kind of visual sensi-bility, which demands further interrogation. Killip wasborn and grew up on the Isle of Man and after workingin London for a while returned to the Isle of Man to beginhis first major documentary project. Between 1968 and1972 he produced the photographic work there whichwas eventually published in book form. It is in theconnections between the Isle of Man work and his laterdocumentation in England that one finds akey to Killip'svisual imagination. Killip's photographic work in theNorthern coastal communities of Askam andSkinningrove although at one level the documentation ofparticular lives can also be understood as an attempt toplace those represented within a personal vision. In thecommunities of the North East Killip saw immigrantworkers brought in to work in steel through industrial-ization, but with backgrounds in fishing and agriculturewhich they were able to sustain. Arguably they provideda link to apre-industrialpast, and also alink with his ownbackground in the peasant culture of the Isle of Man -"my work in England is mixed up with those changes".Killip understood his work as a way of trying to "opena dialogue with that history".16

For Killip industrialization is perceived as negative


K/cfe w/f/7 collected junk near Byker Bridge, 1971

SlRKkA-LlISA KONTTINP N

All images from the Byker series (reproduced courtesy of thephotographer)

Girl playing a piano in a derelict house, 1971

28 Voume15 Number 1 Spring-Summer 1999 Visual Anthropology Review

Raby Bingo, (The Coffin'), CommercialRoad-Oban Road, 1975

The living room of Harryand Bella Burness, RabyStreet, 1975


Paul Trevor - Sunday afternoon, Mozart Street, Granby, Liverpool, 1975 (reproduced courtesy of thephotographer).This is the opening image from Survival Programmes (Exit 1982). Trevor lived and photographedin the Everton district of Liverpool for six months whilst working on this documentary project; he also spent timephotographing in Toxteth.

EXIT PHOTOGRAPHY GROI P

Exit consisted of three photographers, Chris Steele-Perkins, Chris Battye and Paul Trevor In the publication that cameout of the work made during the mid to late seventies, which included transcribed interviews as well as photographs (Exit1982), individual photographs were not attributed, "our responsibility throughout has been for the work as a whole' (p.7).Trevor recalls thatthey looked at the model of shooting scripts used by the US Farm Security Administration when planningthe work, though in actual fact the photographers worked more or less individually. The images reproduced here are byPaul Trevor.


Paul Trevor - Choosing Sides for Football, Bverton, Liverpool, 1975 (reproduced courtesy of the photographer)In an interview Trevordiscusses the importance children as a first line ofdefense in the communities he has photographedin Britain and elsewhere. Acceptance by the children of the community was therefore seen as an important first step inbuilding a sustained documentary practice

Paul Trevor -Looting, NottingHill, London, 1977 (repro-duced courtesy of the photog-rapher)

One aim of the book was tomake connections betweenthe conditions in which work-ing class people live and widerpo itical and economic pro-cesses. The political analysisis conveyed by the building ofa visual narrative that has itsclimax in the images of streetconflictthatdominate the finalsection.


force cutting people off trom the past - "for me there isvery little, .difference between a coal mine, a steel mineand the Pirelli factory, they re all pretty awful. .the roughend of industrial production" - whereas ironically formany of the documentary photographers in the North,and in fact in the working class political struggles of the

class life up to that point, and still resonate in the popularsymbolism of working class life, ceased to provide themain focus for photographic documentation. Instead,there is agreater emphasis on sites of cultural consump-tion and the home, including in some cases the detailedrecording of the everyday lives of individual families.

Paul Graham - Waiting Room, Southwark DHSS, South London, 1984 (Original in color.Reproduced courtesy of the photographer,)

1980s, it was the very communities and patterns of lifecreated by industrialization that were under threat and inneed ot political support and cultural articulation.

FROM WORKERS TO CONSI MPRS?

In comparison with the work that originated in the1970s, the work that began to be produced in the 1980sand early 1990s represents a significant shift, bothvisually and methodologically, in the representation ofworking class lives. Representations ot communalspaces such as the street, the pub and the workplacewhich had dominated many visual studies of working

The shift from black and white to color is also signifi-cant. Paul Graham, who set about producing a system-atic record of the interior spaces of social securityoffices across Britain at a time of rising unemployment(Graham 1986), recounts the responses to the use ofcolor: 'people were shocked to see work like this madein color; 'serious photographers used black and whiteand that was that. Color was seen as trivial, and it's hardnow to imagine the flack it received, people thought Iwas taking a serious subject and trivializing it, as if colorfilm removed any social context' (Wilson et al 1996).Although the switch from black and white to color mightat one level be considered relatively trivial, or the


subject of technical determinants, I want to argue that itwas also indicative of a shift in concerns, from anexplicitly political to a cultural representation of workingclass life. Rather than presenting the development as astylistic innovation led by particular practitioners, Iwould like to suggest the emergence of the color schoolin British social documentary photography can be tracedback to the work in the 1970s that began to systemati-cally record working class culture, and partly from theinside. Although there are clear differences in terms ofpolitical commitment to those represented, there is acontinuity of visual and cultural concerns between theliving room interiors in Konttinen's Byker and thecollaboration between sociologist Nicholas Barker andphotographer Martin Parr (1992) to record people in thedomestic interiors they had fashioned.

The move into color arguably signalled a closerinterest in the texture and aesthetic qualities of the livingspaces of the subjects of the photographic work.Graham's particular take on, what in photographic termsmight be considered a traditional subject in the historyof documentary photography, Oargely male) unemploy-ment was very much about the environment in whichthis was experienced - "lemon green walls, orangeFormica benches and flickering fluorescent lights" (Gra-ham 1986).

Similarly, it is interesting that interior decorationseems to be a consistent theme in the reception of thework of Nick Waplington and Richard Billingham. Inboth cases reviewers find the images simultaneouslyfascinating and repulsive, echoing responses to visualalterity common in cross-cultural encounters: "Thesesuffocating interiors are not the accidental result ofindifference or accumulation but, far more disturbingly,have been created on purpose, with some care even"(Williams 1996: 31); "the interiors bear all the grubbyclaustrophobic signs of bad British housekeeping. ButWaplington isn't appalled by the overflowing ashtrays,cheap furniture, kitsch-lined shelves, and low ceilings;indeed, it his complete lack of irony or distance from thesubjects that makes these pictures so incredibly beautifulin their frightening way" (Spring 1992:100). What is itthat the reviewer finds frightening here? That they maybe seduced by what they know by culture and educationto be bad taste?

There are a number of reasons for such a shift infocus. First, as I have suggested the emergence of thenotion of consumption rather than work as the locus of

cultural identity became more prominent. Second, inrelation to this, colorphotographic imagery in advertisingand elsewhere was altering the visual culture, inevitablyvisual practitioners were respondingto this context. PaulTrevor of the Exit group worked in parallel on a photo-graphic project about television ('A Love Story') whichhe saw as the "flipside" to the world presented inSurvival Programmes.17 In methodological terms photo-graphic practice was also influenced by debates thatquestioned both the possibility and legitimacy of repre-senting others. The corresponding lack of faith innarratives of political change suggested a more relativis-tic and increasingly circumscribed practice. I think it isalso arguable that for the first time a significant numberof photographers were emerging who themselves camefrom working class backgrounds, and therefore had adifferent relation to working class spaces than those whohad gone before, though of course this was true of someof the earlier work discussed already.

The title of Nick Waplington's first publication-Living Room-v/hich has subsequently been taken as thetitle for the body of work as a whole, draws attention tothe significance of the representation of domestic space.A simple count of the photographs confirms the domi-nance of interior spaces. In the fifty eight photographsthat make up Living Room, thirty seven are of interiorspaces, another 12 depict the immediate exterior of thehouses, with the rest being made up of various photo-graphs which suggests some sense of community space,the school, the doctors, the news agent. This can be seenas a reversal of the balance in Konttinen' s Byker, wherethe interior is a secondary theme in relation to morepublic communal spaces. What Waplington offers in theseries of images is a sense of communal, shared spacecentered on the domestic interior. Although in manyways this is a contemporary vision, and the specificityof the work to time and place is important to thephotographer, there is in Waplington's quotation ofearlier photographic images of working class life (cf.Picture Post), a romantic reference to a disappearingsense of community.18 I'm thinking here particularly ofthe scenes in which the street is being used as anextension of the domestic space as a place for childrento play, and adults to talk - these make up a very small,but I suggest, significant number of images. One mightcompare also the opcrmgimaigein Survival Programmes,as a further example of this type of image used to evokean entire view of working class life. Waplington makes


Waplington almost excluded this image from the publication on the basis of its traditional structure.

NICK WAPLINGTON

(Originals in color. All images reproduced courtesy of the photographer)


This image from the second pub-lication in the 'Living Room' se-ries shows one of the characterslooking through a copy of the firstpublication.


this explicit in his introduction to the second book: 'Thisis a large, close-knit community; everyone takes care ofeveryone else and nothing is too much trouble. At onetime, there were a lot of communities like this one, butmodern living no longer allows it. Nowadays, mostpeople seem to love being in their own personal worlds.Thankfully that is not so everywhere". The images,then, are positioned as representing a last bastion ofcommunal values. It is interesting that in the context ofa society that is increasingly placing an emphasis onmobility and the ownership of the means of transport,Waplington presents images of cars as things that do notwork, or, in what I find one of the most intriguing imagesin the series, they suggest a sense of foreboding.

A number of other photographers share this concernto record in detail domestic spaces, including AnthonyHaughey in his study - 'Home' - of Catholic families inIreland and Richard Billingham in his study of his parents(1996).19 All but three of the images in Ray's a Laughare taken inside Billingham's parents' flat. The threethat are taken outside - close-up images of birds - areintended no doubt to offer a kind of visual poeticcounterpoint to the interiors and the condition of themain character Ray. Billingham offers a different viewof domestic space, one that draws attention continuallyto the boundary between inside and out. UnlikeWaplington this is not a communal space that has a webof links to local sites, but instead is one of confinement.Several images in the book draw our attention to the edgeof the domestic space, but instead of offering a view ofoutside deliberately frustrate it. As Billingham says ofhis father: "If he went outside he became ill. He had afriend from a neighboring tower block - himself analcoholic - who came around to make strong home-brewfor him. This was much cheaper than normal beer andmeant that Ray didn't have to venture outside to the off-licence" (Billingham 1996).

One of the most striking things about the work ofWaplington and Billingham is the representation ofworking class masculinity within a domestic space.Images of working class men have predominantly beeneither directly or indirectly about physical work,20 theaesthetic possibilities inherent in black and white photog-raphy have often been harnessed to good effect in givingexpression to this view of working class life. It issignificant that in a period in which traditional manualemployment has been in rapid decline in Britain, thesetwo bodies of work come to prominence representing

working class men almost without reference to work.At first glance the photographic approach adopted

by these photographers seems to be one of extremenaturalism. Despite the intimacy of the scenes which thephotographs record, the subjects rarely appear con-scious of the photographer's presence. Yet, this in itselfis a kind of clue to the circumstances that surrounded theproduction of this work. The photographer's presenceis not that of a stranger, but instead it is clear thatWaplington is as at home within this environment ashis subjects are at home with him. As is true ofethnographic practice generally, so with photography,the resulting image is, in part at least, dependent on theparticular quality of the interaction between photogra-pher and subject. One image shows a girl cryingapproaching the camera, would she approach the camerain this way if the photographer was a stranger within thiscontext? Indeed, access to many of the scenes in thework of both photographers is highly dependent on theparticular relationship between photographer and sub-ject.

Susan Sontag's characterization of the photogra-pher as a tourist in other people's realities (Sontag1979) does not apply in the context of the work ofWaplington, Billingham or Haughey. Billingham choseto photograph the fraught domestic life of his parents,Haughey returned to where his uncle lived in Ireland tophotograph family life, motivated in part by an a desire toexplore his own relationship to Catholicism,21 andWaplington's subjects could be considered as an adoptedextended family with whom he clearly has a closerelationship.22 The long-term engagement on which thephotographic work is based brings the work close to aform of ethnography. Harper refers to Waplington'swork as a "visual ethnography of daily life" (Harper 1998:37), however there are two distinct issues. First, thebiographical link with the subjects, and second, thestructuring of an approach around visual rather thantextual recording. Waplington's work was the result ofa methodology structured by the rhythm of his photo-graphic practice, and in that sense is a distinct kind ofethnographic approach:

What basically used to happen was when I firststarted making the pictures, I used to shoot duringthe day. I'd go down to the college, the technicianwould give me the films from the day before and I'dgo and contact sheet them in the evening, then I'd


go down to the Newcastle Arms have a few beersand then go home, and then in the morning I'd goback there and I'd take the contact sheets from theday before, and they'd look through them, and theyactually became very good at looking at contactsheets, then the next day I'd maybe make someprints, and I used to give them prints, so by the timeit came to put the book together in 1990 they werewell aware of the pictures, they'd seen them at acouple of exhibitions, they had prints of all of them.

The relationship between photographer and subjectraises important questions.23 Perhaps most importantly,can this work be considered as a form of cultural self-representation? If the work does not exactly fulfil whatDon Slater argues is the promise of photography, toenable people to tell their own stories (Slater 1995), thenit does come close to it in an interesting way.

Abrief comparison withphotographic documentaryfrom Britain in the 1930' sis revealing. The seeming easewith which these photographers are able to makephotographs at such close range contrasts strongly withthe social awkwardness, such as that recounted byHumphrey Spender, which has accompanied manyother photographic studies of working class life. The useof photographs to document working class life in theNorth of England in the 1930's was predicated on asocial and hence spatial separation between the photog-rapher and the photographed. As Stanley points out inhis study of the methods of Mass-Observation:24 "theonly way to be sure that 'natives' were not acting up wasto catch them about their ordinary life without then-knowledge. Consequently, in the M-O records, thereare almost no photographs of interiors" (Stanley 1981:128). This social divide has visual and aesthetic conse-quences.

Gillian Rose, also discussing photographs of work-ing class life in the 1930' s, though in this case from EastLondon, directs attention to images of the street, oftentaken showing the houses in linear perspective, imposingasenseof visual order (Rose 1997:283). Similarly, Rosedraws attention to the way in which women can be seenstanding in doorways in formal poses for the cameraphysically and symbolically barring entry to the home:"Documentary photography's perspective produced aviewing position that distanced the photographer (and,through him or her, their audience) from the photo-graphed people and places" (Rose 1997:284). As I have

argued above, Waplington's use of a similar visualconstruction in a small number ofthe Living Room seriesphotographs, both situate the work in the broader con-text of representations of working class life, but alsosignal a break from this work.

The elision Rose makes here between the pho-tographer and the viewer, is no doubt correct for thecontext about which she is writing. However, the workunder discussion here evidences a more complex rela-tionship between photographer and viewer. In thesebodies of work it would be a mistake to assume that theviewer and photographer have similar relationships tothe space represented. Indeed, part of the interest of thework is precisely this difference. The photographersmake visually available spaces with which they havean intimate relationship, but which the viewer does not.These bodies of work are insider accounts, and notsimply the result of a long term study, made available forwider consumption.

Waplington's comment that, "For me the picturesare just a record of the great times we have together",could be made by many people talking about the purposeof keeping a family album, and this is the frame ofreference which is used by the families represented: "In1991 Living Room was published. Suddenly Janet,family, and friends were in print, and we all looked at thebook and laughed, and reminisced about the momentsitcontained. Then it was put away like any family albumand saved for moments of quiet reflection". This isreinforced visually by two images in the second of thetwo Living Room series books, one of which shows theearlier book being viewed by a family member, and theother showing the wedding photograph used on thecover adorning the living room wall. Billingham on theother hand describes his image making as an attempt tomake sense of what was a difficult context: "I was justtrying to make order out of chaos", indicating an innerpsychological motivation for the work. Nevertheless,despite these caveats, it is clear that the images have beentaken up and circulated in public contexts. Despite anyclaims to the contrary on the part of the photographersthis makes them part of a public discourse on contem-porary working class life in Britain. Several commen-tators, including Irvine Welsh in an essay in Weddings,Parties, Anything, make reference to the photographs asimages of poverty in post-industrial economies.

Despite the fact that Living Room is presented


with virtually no contextualization, the work can still beconsidered political in its intent, though the interventionis at a broader cultural level. Although he may be opento the charge of Romanticism, Waplington was attempt-ing to articulate a positive version of life in MargaretThatcher's Britain for those who had been most deni-grated by recent politics. The work was deliberately andconsciously against both Thatcherite values and the kindof visual representations that viewed working-classpeople living in a kind of low-end consumer nightmaresurrounded by cheap goods and rubbish (cf. Parr 1986).The images are then both a documentary recording butalso part of a visual polemic or dialogue about contem-porary society. One of the mistakes of anthropologicalphotography is the belief that the meanings of images canbe restricted to the former, thereby ignoring their culturaland political import.

TOWARDS A THEORY OF PHOTOGRAPHIC VISUALIZATION

I want to conclude by drawing out a number ofissues that I think are important to a theory of visualiza-tion, that is to the understanding of the making ofphotographic images of cultures and societies, whetherby anthropologists or others. A theory of visualization,I suggest, will need to consider two principal elements:the methodological, and the aesthetic.

Methodologically the making of photographs ofothers can be understood as a particular kind of ethno-graphic engagement. It therefore requires to be under-stood in its own terms not merely as an adjunct toparticipant observation. The way in which the photog-rapher relates to the photographed is of some consider-able significance. Spender's effort to become an unob-served observer through a process of building trust andfamiliarity while photographing a family in Stepney in1934, is considerably different in practical and ethicalterms from the kind of covert photography he engagedin for Mass-Observation, and which at times broughthim into conflict with his subjects (Spender & Mulford1982: 127). Neither is it simply a matter of being openwith the camera. In relation to his images of the JarrowHunger Marches, some of which were published in TheLeft Review, Spender recounts the resentment of themarchers who saw an exploitative element and a lackof commitment in his joining the march ten milesoutside of London.25 Similarly, there are importantethical and moral considerations that pertain to the

construction of visual accounts of culture. These mightparallel those involved in the construction of ethno-graphic texts, but they are not the same. Visual accountsfor example cannot be anonymized in the way that textscan. Itis interesting that Spender's documentation of thenorthern industrial city of Bolton, went under the gener-alizing title of "Worktown". However, it is only separa-tion in time and place of the making of the work and itspublication that makes this strategy genuinely effective.The publication of photographic work closer in timeand place to its origination enters the photographs intoa more local politics of representation, as Spenderdiscovered in his photographing of Tyneside for PicturePost when the published images were challenged asmisleading by local politicians. The initial reception ofWaplington's Living Room work in Nottingham is anexample of how the representation working class life ininner cities continues to be strongly contested. Thework, which documented a particular housing estate inthe city, became known at the same time as the localcouncil were involved in trying to improve the image ofthe estate, in particular the reputation that had built upthrough the local press of the estate as an area notoriousfor crime and drug use. The council saw Waplington'swork as reinforcing this view of the estate and commis-sioned a photographer to take more 'positive' images inorder to stage a counter exhibition.26 Waplington is alsoacutely conscious of the fact that the publication of hisphotographs has made the subjects vulnerable to inva-sions of privacy by journalists and others who have seenthe work.

One also has be aware that photographs have aparticular cultural value as artifacts, independent of theirplace within a particular documentary study, in a waythat is not equally true of ethnographic texts. Konttinen'swork at Byker, for example, began with her setting upa photographic studio and taking portraits for free,"which was a further attempt to establish a relationshipwith the people there. The giving away of photographswas always there from the beginning as a way of sayingthank you for taking people's time.. .The photographswere appreciated and they ended up on the mantel-pieces" (Martin 1983: 1160). Chris Killip offers aparticularly striking example. After the drowning of ayoung man who had been in a boat at Skinningrovewhere Killip was photographing, the photographer wasasked by the person's mother if he had any photographsof him. Killip replied that he did not - "I went home that


night and nearly hit myself over the head with ahammer, I'd answered her in the wrong way, in thesense that did I have any pictures I was thinking of mypictures, do I have my pictures of Simon, meaning thepictures that I think are good.. .1 had a lot of pictures ofSimon". From his negatives Killip was able to create analbum of sixty images which he gave to the mother. Ontwo later occasions Killip also made up albums of peoplewho died.27 Photographic images, then, are not simplythe outcome of the relationship between photographerand photographed, but also an aspect of that relationship,as objects of collaborative reflection and exchange.

In contrast to issues of methodology and the own-ership and display of images, anthropologists have givenrelatively little attention to the visual-aesthetic aspect.The question ofvisual style is one that is often perceivedas problematic for visual anthropology. Although pho-tography has had a significant, if marginal, presence inanthropology, and to a lesser extent sociology; with a fewnotable exceptions, the work of professional imagemakers has been much less discussed. One reason forthis is the predominance of naturalistic modes of photo-graphic interpretation. The photographic image istreated as unproblematic, and theoretically, if not alwaystechnically, transparent. For example, the camera isused simply as a visual notebook to record socialphenomena such as gesture, dress and the organizationof social space. Indeed, for the anthropologist orsociologist as photographer, professional training as animage-maker may be perceived to get in the way ofrather than assist the research process, as is indicated inthe title of a book by Hagaman, How I Learned not tobeaPhotojournalist(Hagaman 1996). Michael Young'sdiscussion of Malinowski' s photographic practice equatesa serious ethnographic photography with a straight-onmiddle distance viewpoint. Having dismissed the char-acter of MaUnowski' s interaction with his subjects as thereason for his photographic style, Young argues that

The only plausible explanation is that his markedpreference for the middle distance was method-ologically driven, albeit of an inarticulately nature.The implication is that Malinowski invariably feltobliged to capture a background, a setting, a situa-tion, a social context. He sought to inscribe visualclues to what he was later to define in a theoreticalcontribution to linguistics as "context of situation"(Young 1998: 18).

MaUnowski is reproached for the consideration offormal qualities in the images, which are seen as adistraction from the true concerns of the ethnographer:"[the] photograph of juxtaposed logs and sticks ofvarying bulk and texture is further testimony toMalinowski's occasional surrender to an aesthetic im-pulse. It conveys little ethnographic information, thoughthe inscription on the reverse dutifully appeals to real-ism" (Young 1998: 147). This is not a criticism ofYoung's analysis of Malinowski's images, but simply towonder if in all cases the question of the visual can bedealt with so simply.

Documentary photographers are often seen to begiving greater weight to the visual at the expense of thesubject. Becker argues that the conventional approachto photographic criticism is to distinguish betweenphotographs that are informational and those that areexpressive. In other words to mark the boundary be-tween scientific and artistic photographic practices. Thiscan be construed as an institutional problem, socialscientific research demands valid representations,whereas the art world demands stylistic innovation.28 Iconcur with Becker when he argues that this distinctionis unhelpful to an understanding of documentary photo-graphs, which derive at least part of their significancefrom their social reference; and that in any case thedistinction is a false one - "every photograph has someof both, and that has consequences for the way we lookat, experience, think about, and judge photographs of allkinds" (Becker 1986). However, Becker's point that thestylistic devices available to the photographer offer themeans to emphasize some facts and de-emphasizeothers, is only the most obvious issue in relation to thevisual and aesthetic.29

What I want to suggest here is the notion that visualrepresentations have historical and cultural depth.30

Killip's photograph of the Jarrow youth taken in 1976,for example, invokes through the reference to thissymbolic location a whole history of working classstruggle.31 As I hope I have demonstrated, photographsof working class life are not transparent windows on theworld, but instead are competing versions, definingthemselves and being defined in relation to other visualaccounts. A selection of the photographic work pro-duced since the formation of Amber/Side was exhibitedinaseries of eight exhibitions that toured regional venuesin 1995 and 1996, as a means to explore the significanceof images of the communities' recent past in a period of


redefinition. The aim of the work was described as"reflecting] on a past which in many cases has disap-peared, yet is still uppermost in our minds when we cometo define particularcommunities around the region.. .Thework does not lay claim to delivering some kind ofdefinitive history of the region. Yet Side's consistentpolicy of documenting everyday life, the unremarkable,the non-newsworthy, does reveal a different interpreta-tion of the history of the period to, say, that which hasbeen generated by public relations and news organiza-tions" (Side 1995: 2). What needs to be considered isthe currency of visual representations in an increasinglyprofessionalized image dominated society.

The historical depth of visual imagery is clearly notlost on Killip, who, when invited to return to Jarrow tophotograph in 1996, deliberately worked in color inorder to avoid the slippage into pastness that wouldarguably surround images produced in black and white.Over time the photographs and the ways of life theyvisualize become resources of social and cultural memoryand imagination; the indexical becomes iconic.32 Thereality of the North East in the photography of ChrisKillip becomes a "place of memory" (Auge 1995),perhaps an "historical fantasy",33 at least for viewerswho have no other knowledge of, or connection with, theregion.

In his paper "In Search of a Social Aesthetic"MacDougall draws attention to the importance of theaesthetic dimension of everyday life. A social aesthetic,he argues, consists of acomplex of interrelated elements,in the example he gives of the life of a particular schoolin Northern India, "such things as the design of buildingsand grounds, the use of clothing and color, the rules ofdormitory life, the organization of students' time, par-ticular styles of speech and gesture, and all the rituals ofeveryday life" (MacDougall 1999). For my purposeshere, while I want to retain something of the notion ofa social aesthetic as MacDougall describes it - it is, Ibelieve, central to the concerns of the photographicpractices I have been discussing here - 1 also want todraw attention to the further visual aesthetic layer thatinevitably mediates any attempt to represent the textureof social and cultural life in a medium such as photog-raphy. Visual anthropology should consider both as-pects: the visual and aesthetic dimension in everydaylife; and the ways in which everyday life has been

t An extented development of MacDougall's views onsocial aesthetics appear on pp. 3-20 of this issue, ed

visualized through photography.tWhat I want to argue is that those concerned with

the visual representation of cultures must make twokinds of commitment. First, a methodological commit-ment to understand the cultures in which they work.This is a commitment from which no anthropologist islikely to dissent Second, they must also seek tounderstand the complexity of the visual domain intowhich their work is entered. The complex mediascapeof competing images of cultures and societies cannot beignored. Although it would be an extreme position toargue that cultures exist only through their visualization,it is certainly true that the majority rely on visual imagesfor their knowledge of other cultures, and that thereforethose images have real effects in the world. TTiereproducibility and circulation of images of other peoplehas profound moral and ethical implications, with whichvisual anthropologists have necessarily to engage.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to: Bolton Museum and Art Gallery forpermission to reproduce two of Humphrey Spender'sphotographs from the Mass Observation collection; theHulton Getty Picture Collection for permission to repro-duce one Spender photograph from the Picture PostCollection; the photographers, Paul Graham, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Humphrey Spender, Paul Trevor andNick Waplington for permission to reproduce imagesfrom their work and for kindly providing prints and slidesfrom which to do so; Murray Martin for taking time toread a draft of the paper and discussing with me thehistory of Side Gallery; Rob Perks and the staff of theNational Sound Archive at the British Library for theirassistance in making use of the Oral History of BritishPhotography collection; Humphrey Spender for grant-ing permission to listen to his interview in the OHBPcollection; Marie Jefsioutine for assisting me in scanningthe images for publication; and finally to J. David Sapirand the reviewers at VAR for their assistance in preparingthis article.

NOTE ON ILLUSTRATIONS

The images reproduced here inevitably representonly a small fraction of the work that is discussed, andfor that reason I would suggest that interested readerslook to the published books cited in the paper. However,


two omissions warrant brief comment. Both RichardBillingham and Chris Killip declined permission toreproduce any of their photographs to accompany thisarticle. Billingham felt that he did not want to beassociated with the other photographers referenced inthe article, and wanted to down play the representationaland documentary aspects of the work. In my view thisis a naive perspective on how the work can be under-stood, and the historical contexts and practices uponwhich it depends for its effectiveness. It is also perhaps,slightly disingenuous particularly given that his book wasedited by Julian Germain, a photographer whose ownwork has been about the post-industrial North, andMichael Collins, formerly a picture editor with a nationalnewspaper magazine. Killip's reasons I think aresimilar, though he declined to articulate them. Althoughhe worked closely with Amber/Side for a period duringthe late seventies and early eighties, he has since deliber-ately distanced himself from the Amber/Side group andtheir approach to photography, preferring to cultivate amore individualistic perception of his own artistic pur-pose.

NOTES

1. "Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen lived in the old Byker area ofNewcastle for six years and photographed it fortwelve", (back cover, Konttinen 1988).2. Tom Harrisson who set up the Mass Observationproject of which Spender became a part was an anthro-pologist, and Mass Observation had as an advisorBronislaw Malinowski. Malinowski also contributed anessay to the M-OpublicationFim Fear's Work. Spenderrecalls attending a course given by Raymond Firth inpreparation for another of Harrisson's planned projects,though this project was never actually carried out.3. Humphrey Spender interviewed by Grace Robertson,1992, Oral History of British Photography Collection,National Sound Archive, British Library. There is a lackof clarity on exactly how long Spender spent photo-graphing in Bolton for Mass Observation, elsewherehimself giving varying accounts (see Taylor 1994).4. For a discussion ofthe nostalgic reinvestment in thistype of image in the 1990s see Taylor & Jamieson 1997.5. According to Paul Trevor it was the political natureofthe work that led many national venues to decline theopportunity to show the Exit photographic work, thougharguably it was as much if not more to do with the

changing concerns of photographic galleries since theoriginal production of the work. As Val Williamssuggests in her interview with Trevor, and as has beenpointed out by one of the reviewers of this paper, thework was probably seen as representing a period inBritish photography that had been left behind (PaulTrevorinterviewedby Val Williams, 1991,Oral Historyof British Photography Collection). The Side Gallery inNewcastle was one ofthe few galleries willing to showthe work and now holds the material as one of thecollections in the Amber/Side archive.

6. This question was put to Spender directly in aninterview by Grace Robertson. However, althoughSpender did not make this distinction he did make adifferent kind of distinction in respect of some of hisphotographic work. Spender talks about his threeunpaid jobs - coverage of the Jarrow marches, thephotographs in Stepney for the probation officerClemence Paine, and the work for Mass-Observation- as linked to his left-wing political stance. The fact thatthey are unpaid is what marks them out, ironically asSpender was well aware it was his private income andclass position that allowed him to do work unpaid. It isnot unfair to say that he saw this as an indication of hiscommitment, though he is also aware of its role inappeasing his conscience. Humphrey Spender inter-viewed by Grace Robertson, 1992, Oral History ofBritish Photography Collection.

7. The photographs were dropped from the revisededition published in 1982 by Croom Helm.8. Foradiscussionof the American view of British socialdocumentary from the 1980s see Kismaric 1990. (Theexhibition brought together the work of Chris Killip,Graham Smith, John Davies, Martin Parr and PaulGraham).9. The group is still based and working actively inNewcastle, with a number of its original membersremaining, including photographer Sirkka-LiisaKonttinen. A current collaborative project looks at theimpact ofthe demise ofthe mining industry on commu-nities in the Durham Coalfield area.10."During the early seventies the photographers withinAmber felt an acute need to create a gallery (Side) inorder to exhibit their own work, and to be able to see andshow the best of international work. This was at a timewhen there were no galleries in Newcastle showingphotography" (personal communication, Murray Mar-tin, March 2000).


11. Ron McCormick, was the initial choice of the groupto run the gallery, and he played an important part inraising funding. However, partly perhaps because he didnot share the same ideological and political commit-ments to the use of photography as Amber/Side, he onlylasted six months. McCormick was followed by MurrayMartin (one of the founder members of Amber Associ-ates) for aperiod of two years andthen by Killip for aboutthe same length of time. The philosophy of the groupwas to have apractitioner-led exhibition space, hence therelatively short periods that individuals ran the gallery,and decisions were made collectively by the galleryteam. This account is based on the Killip interview heldat the National Sound Archive (Chris Killip interviewedby Mark Haworth-Booth, 1997, Oral History of BritishPhotography Collection) and personal communicationwith Murray Martin, March 2000. Killip offers a moreindividualistic account of the work of the gallery, and inparticular his role, whereas Martin argues that the gal-lery, like all the practical work at Amber, was never theresponsibility of any one individual but instead was acollective enterprise. According to Martin, it was he,rather than Killip, who did most of the commissioningduring this early period, though with Killip playing astrongly influential advisory role.12. The current archive database lists 191 separateholdings with a varying number of prints in each. Themajority of the holdings, though certainly not all, arebodies of work concerning the region. Personal commu-nication, Richard Grassick, Side Gallery, November1999.13. Side 1995, wrongly attributes these images as beingtaken in Scotswood. Personal communication with thephotographer, March 2000.14. Chris Killip interviewed by Mark Haworth-Booth,1997, Oral History of British Photography Collection.15. The latter texts emphasize the North East accent andvernacular, which I think reads very differently nowthan it would have done when the book was firstproduced.16. Chris Killip interviewed by Mark Haworth-Booth,1997, Oral History of British Photography Collection.The work of Graham Smith another photographer whoworked with Amber/Side, and with whom Killip collabo-rated on the 'Another Country' exhibition in 1985, is alsoworth considering here, and should be part of anyextended study of this period.17. Paul Trevor interviewed by Val Williams, 1991, Oral

History of British Photography Collection.18. Although Waplington noted that there was no delib-erate intention to make visual reference in the way Isuggest, he did make the following comment on thestreet image with the child in the bath: "I almost didn'tuse that because I thought it was too traditional in itsstructure" (Nick Waplington interviewed by the author2/6/98).19. My comments here refer to the construction of thebook which it has been suggested to me was as much thework of Michael Collins and Julian Germain (Billingham'scollege tutor) as it was the work of Billingham himself.20. Paul Graham's book Beyond Caring (Graham1986) which records the scenes inside numerous socialsecurity waiting rooms perhaps signals the endpoint ofthis type of photography in the context of contemporaryBritain.21. Anthony Haughey interviewed by Val Williams,1994, Oral History of British Photography Collection.22. Waplington first began to photograph the two fami-lies soon after he came to Nottingham, where he alreadyhad family connections, to study photography at TrentPolytechnic: "what actually happened was that I wasphotographing my grandfather and Dawn, one of theladies in the Living Room book, used to collect hispension for me, and I was photographing my grandfatherin his house, and she came round. So she walked intothe situation where I was photographing, I didn't walkinto her house with a camera. She came with her kidsand I was photographing him and they wanted theirpictures taken, and she just said why don't you comeround and take pictures at our house, take some picturesof the kids for me. I knew her husband anyway, and I'dbeen going round to their house to watch football onSunday afternoons, I just hadn't taken my camera. SoI tried it one Sunday, I took my camera with me and Itook a particular picture which ended up in the LivingRoom book, which at that particular stage was by far andaway the most interesting and the best picture I'd evertaken" (Nick Waplington interviewed by the author 2/6/98). Although the Living Room work was begun whileWaplington was at college, it now represents a body ofwork developed over more than ten years.

23. This could be referred to as "consent throughhabituation. Not only do the subjects know they arebeing photographed, they get to see how they are beingphotographed" (Nick Stanley 1998, personal communi-cation).


24. Photography made a small but significant contribu-tion to the methods of the Mass Observation movementin Britain (see Stanley 1981).25.HumphreySpenderinterviewedbyGraceRobertson,1992, Oral History of British Photography Collection.Jarrow, a former shipbuilding and coalmining town onTyneside, lent its name to the hunger marches that tookplace during the economic depression of the 193Qs whenthe unemployed from across Britain walked to Londonto demand the right to work.26. Nick Waplington interviewed by the author 2/6/98.27. Chris Killip interviewed by Mark Haworth-Booth,1997, Oral History of British Photography Collection.28. Tagg (1988) discusses the institutional separation ofthese two dominant "photographies".29. There is in Becker's argument an implicit structur-alist theory of photography underlying his view thatangle of view, focus, etc. can be combined by thephotographer to create or emphasize meaning.30 .This notion is developed from Foster in his paper onthe borrowings from anthropology in recent art practice(Foster 1995 & 1996).31. See note 25.32. One might consider as analogous developments, theemergence in recent years of an increasing number ofworking class heritage sites, for example around miningcommunities, which both visualize and perform the"nearly past" (Stanley 1998).33. This interpretation of Killip's In Flagrante wassuggested to me in an interview with photographer NickWaplington. Waplington made the following comments:"In Flagrante is a very strong book, but I just think thathe was too tied up in Paul Strand and the historicalreferences to Paul Strand, and I feel that because of thathe made very quantifiable decisions to cut out thingswithin the frame of the images that actually pin thoseimages down to the time in which the pictures weretaken, therefore he was producing a sort of historicalfantasy book, and therefore even though some of thosepictures are extremely strong and extremely powerful, asa work as a whole I think it's a very poor interpretationof the eighties" (Nick Waplington interviewed by theauthor 2/6/98).

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