At my tutor’s suggestion I have had a look at an old television programme called Return Journey (which dates back to 1981 but is available on YouTube). This focuses on three photographers: Humphrey Spender and the work he did in Bolton (“Worktown”) for Mass Observation, Derek Smith, and Jimmy Forsyth. The question with which I approached this programme was what, if anything, does it have to say about the thesis I proposed for the Assignment 4 essay. The short answer is, I think, not a lot, but nevertheless it raises some interesting points that are relevant.
Mass Observation, and Spender’s work for the scheme, was expressly anthropological in nature (the programme begins with a somewhat tongue in cheek description of the discovery of that exotic race the Northern Working Class was discovered and needed to be investigated and documented which unfortunately does not disguise what comes across as a sometimes fundamentally patronising streak in Mass Observation, worthy though the scheme certainly was) recording how people lived. It was not so concerned with where they lived, with portraying the environment they inhabited, except to the extent that environment influenced the way the people lived. It was not a visual description of Bolton, or any other generic northern working town, in the same way that Klein described New York.
Smith’s work does not take me much further forward. His story was more to do with his return to Newcastle after studying in London, his ceasing to work as a photographer, becoming involved instead with Amber Films and the Side Gallery (some interesting shots of the old interior of the gallery as I remember it in the mid-1980s).
Forsyth of course spent much of his life on Tyneside and all of his work was done there. It is his that is perhaps the most relevant to the question that I was exploring. Rather than include examples of his work here I am instead putting a link below to the Amber archive of his work, which includes some really nice examples of what he did. Does he fit my thesis? I have to say I do not think so. He was in many ways a classic street photographer, taking pictures of the people, places, things, that he saw around the Scotswood Road. I do not feel that he was making a photographic portrait of his adopted city through the medium and subject matter of its people in anything like the way Klein did. If anything, although not formally so, I feel he was again acting in more of an anthropological way, even if he would not necessarily have seen it that way. He simply set out to record the area and its people as the old fabric of this part of the city was gradually, but inexorably, destroyed. Not just the physical environment (hardly anything of the old Scotswood survives) but, more importantly, the communities that lived there who were dispersed or housed in new high-rise blocks (most of which have also since fallen prey to the wrecking ball). Yes of course his work does describe the city through its people to some extent but that does not appear to have been his intention. Perhaps therefore, albeit in a negative way, his work might be seen as support for the argument that I mooted that one of the key elements in determining the effect of such bodies of work is the intention of the photographer. Klein wanted to depict New York “in a new way” but that was not also Forsyth’s aim.
So what do I get from this programme, apart from the simple pleasure of seeing really good work in an interesting and well made documentary? Above all I suppose it is more questions. It certainly does not close the open question that I ended my speculation on. It certainly highlights for me the slippery and unreliable, and ultimately unhelpful, categories and genres into which we try to force so much photographic work. Here the boundaries are so blurred as to be almost meaningless. At the same time this work is anthropological, typological, social documentary, topographical, portraiture, etcetera, etcetera. It all depends on the purpose of the work, the intentions of the photographer, and how that work is used subsequently by editors, curators, critics. What this particularly brings back to mind is something that Paul Hill said in his lecture (on YouTube, again; link below):
“Landscape photography is not about the land. Like all photography genres it is about the medium – and the maker – not the subject matter …”
Although there is a danger of this being used as a Humpty-Dumptyish credo (“When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”) this is something with which I very much agree. To the extent there is any firm conclusion to be drawn from the issues that I considered in the essay, this perhaps is it.
Carroll, L, (ed. Gardner, M), (1966). The Annotated Alice. London: Penguin
Scotswood Road
Mark Robinson's OCA Landscape, Place & Environment Blog 