Ruth White

Investigating the Role of Photobooks in Representing British Working Class Life Since 1975 Through Research and Practice

The photograph is not simply an effect of dominant power relations

‘The photograph is not simply an effect of

dominant power relations, or evidence of the optical unconscious, it is also a form of practical knowledge, an inscription of, and an intervention in, a socially divided world’ (Roberts, 1998:4).

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

• To identify and critically analyse photobooks that represent British working class life since 1975 

• To analyse the methods employed in a range of relevant photobooks in order to inform the production of my own photobooks

• To produce photobooks about British working class lives and experiences

Key questions that underpin the research

What are photography and the photobook able to ‘point to’, communicate or reveal about:

• The effects of Thatcherism and Neoliberalism on the life trajectories and life chances of the British working classes (since 1975 when Thatcherism and Neoliberalism began to replace Social Democracy in Britain)

• The lived experience of being British and working class in this period

• The limitations and possibilities of what photobooks can communicate

• How photography and photographic theory have responded to/been shaped by the economic and social changes that have occurred in Britain within this period

The Phil Manion Project

Working at Phil Manion prompt sheet

I would really appreciate it if you could please tell me about your job and life? Some of what you write may be included in the photobook I am making. You can write as much or as little as you want. I would love the finished photobook to give a real sense of what it’s like to work in Phil Manion and of your individual lives (A copy of the finished photobook will be given to you, with extra copies for you to give to whoever you want).

• ExamplesofthingsIwouldliketohearabout,are:HowlonghaveyouworkedinPhilManion?Howdidyouendupworkingthere?Whatisinvolvedinyourjob?Doyouenjoyyourjobandfeelproudofwhatyoumakeordo?Howdoestheworkaffectyourlifeoutsideoftheworkplace?Whatareyourinterestsoutsideofwork?Anythingelseaboutyourworkorlifethatyouwouldliketoshare.

THE WAYS IN WHICH THIS WILL BE INVESTIGATED:

• Analysing a variety of photobooks that feature working class subjects within the period covered

• Analysing the approach used by the photographers/artists/editors of a variety of photobooks (mostly selected from Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s three volumes of The Photobook: A History which is the most comprehensive survey of photobooks produced in the English language recent years) in order to inform the production of my own photobooks.

• Creating an archive of my own photographs of working class subjects and themes from which photographs can be chosen to create photobooks about different aspects of working class life and experience.

• Trying out a range of formal approaches such as documentary photography, studio portraits etc, photographic essays combined with or without texts, the use of captions, text written in different rhetorical styles such as the use of informal language or fiction. The design of the books, e.g. different types of paper -using newsprint, covers, typography, etc. All of which will be influenced by my investigation and analysis of photobooks and photographic theory.

MARTIN PARR THE LAST RESORT (1986)

PAUL REAS I CAN HELP (1988)

CHRISKILLIPIN FLAGRANTE (1988)

NICKWAPLINGTONLIVING ROOM (1991)

NICKWAPLINGTONTHE WEDDING (1996)

RICHARDBILLINGHAMRAYS A LAUGH (1996)

ChrisKillipPirelli Work (1989/2006)

CafeRoyalBooks

The turn to an economic subject in art since 2001

Angela Dimitrakaki has noted that since 2001 in art there has been, 'a turn to an economic subject (not a 'return' as in Hal Foster's economic subject of earlier modernity that 'played such an important role in launching identity politics, Foster's "artists as ethnographer" and the cultural subject as key elements of postmodern discourse.'), which 'has occurred in the context of globalization as the consolidation of a particular phase in the development of a world capitalist economy. The art world 's increasing interest in the economic subject is symptomatic of such consolidation' (Dimitrakaki, 2011:192). Dimitrakaki proposes that within 'contemporary theorizations of globalization', 'a transformation' of labor has been 'detected', 'that displaces the primacy of a traditional working class' (Dimitrakaki, 2011:192).