INVENTORY
01 News from Photography and the Archive Research Centre
PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE ARCHIVE RESEARCH CENTRE
I am pleased to present the first edition of the PARC newsletter. Established in the Spring of 2004, PARC was the first of the University of the Arts London’s Research Centres. Growing a research centre from a proposal on paper to a living, developing physical centre has been a fascinating process. The photography and visual arts community has always been a generous and curious one, alert to new developments, eager to rediscover and reclaim its various histories, and it has welcomed PARC as one of its newest members. PARC is an outgoing research centre, eager to engage with the University’s research culture and with a wider national and international research community. This newsletter reflects projects which have been achieved, but beyond these, the Centre has been active in support of a wide range of initiatives, from single research projects to large schemes of research. It has developed a fruitful and ongoing relationship with Tate Modern, with Photoworks UK and with Magnum Photos, three very different organizations which reflect the diversity and richness of photography’s presence in the cultural arena.
t: +00 44 (0)20 7 514 6625 /6919 f: + 00 44 (0)20 7 514 6535 e: info@photographyresearchcentre.co.uk
PARC Website www.photographyresearchcentre.co.uk Website designed by Marc and Ane Peters
Introduction
03|04
Tate Modern/PARC Seminars Useful Stitches
05|06
The Elephant Vanishes Study Day Unfolding the Tissue:
07|08
Fieldstudy Pat, Do You Still Use These? Just One Picture
09|10
Clare Strand: Unseen Agents Directory of British Photographic Collections The Photography Exhibition Poster Project
11|12
When We Were Young: Derek Ridgers Club and Street Portraits 1978-1987
13|14
Magnum Ireland Pam Skelton
The Centre is, and will continue to be responsive to ideas and interest within the many communities and interest groups which it engages with. Its work with associate artists and scholars from across the University, with the postgraduate community, and with an ever growing group of organizations, including the Photographer’s Gallery, South Hill Park Arts Centre, the Universities of Sunderland and Sussex and the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, has brought about a growing body of research, some of which is described in this newsletter. It would be impossible to thank by name all those who have contributed so generously to the Centre’s work in its first year. As speakers at conferences and study days, as advisors on the many projects which are emerging from the Centre, as supporters who have advised, giving expertise and experience, as audiences who have participated so wholeheartedly in our events and collaborations, our thanks go to you all. Research is an exciting, fluid and creative journey. It feeds into art practice, into teaching and into the wider arenas of media and public events. In the relatively new medium of photography, it has been an essential tool in the forming of histories, the planning of initiatives, the progression of ideas. As projects emerge from PARC, we hope that they will contribute to our understanding of this remarkable and many layered visual culture. Professor Val Williams Director of PARC
01|02
Photography and the Archive Research Centre University of the Arts London London College of Communication Elephant and Castle London SE1 6SB UK
01|02
INVENTORY 01
Inventory Issue 1
It has made links with its immediate locale and the community of the Elephant and Castle, through its collaboration with the LCC School of Media in the Elephant Vanishes project, and, through this emerging research, has engaged with the many and different voices which sound echo through the inner city.
PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE ARCHIVE RESEARCH CENTRE
I am pleased to present the first edition of the PARC newsletter. Established in the Spring of 2004, PARC was the first of the University of the Arts London’s Research Centres. Growing a research centre from a proposal on paper to a living, developing physical centre has been a fascinating process. The photography and visual arts community has always been a generous and curious one, alert to new developments, eager to rediscover and reclaim its various histories, and it has welcomed PARC as one of its newest members. PARC is an outgoing research centre, eager to engage with the University’s research culture and with a wider national and international research community. This newsletter reflects projects which have been achieved, but beyond these, the Centre has been active in support of a wide range of initiatives, from single research projects to large schemes of research. It has developed a fruitful and ongoing relationship with Tate Modern, with Photoworks UK and with Magnum Photos, three very different organizations which reflect the diversity and richness of photography’s presence in the cultural arena.
t: +00 44 (0)20 7 514 6625 /6919 f: + 00 44 (0)20 7 514 6535 e: info@photographyresearchcentre.co.uk
PARC Website www.photographyresearchcentre.co.uk Website designed by Marc and Ane Peters
Introduction
03|04
Tate Modern/PARC Seminars Useful Stitches
05|06
The Elephant Vanishes Study Day Unfolding the Tissue:
07|08
Fieldstudy Pat, Do You Still Use These? Just One Picture
09|10
Clare Strand: Unseen Agents Directory of British Photographic Collections The Photography Exhibition Poster Project
11|12
When We Were Young: Derek Ridgers Club and Street Portraits 1978-1987
13|14
Magnum Ireland Pam Skelton
The Centre is, and will continue to be responsive to ideas and interest within the many communities and interest groups which it engages with. Its work with associate artists and scholars from across the University, with the postgraduate community, and with an ever growing group of organizations, including the Photographer’s Gallery, South Hill Park Arts Centre, the Universities of Sunderland and Sussex and the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, has brought about a growing body of research, some of which is described in this newsletter. It would be impossible to thank by name all those who have contributed so generously to the Centre’s work in its first year. As speakers at conferences and study days, as advisors on the many projects which are emerging from the Centre, as supporters who have advised, giving expertise and experience, as audiences who have participated so wholeheartedly in our events and collaborations, our thanks go to you all. Research is an exciting, fluid and creative journey. It feeds into art practice, into teaching and into the wider arenas of media and public events. In the relatively new medium of photography, it has been an essential tool in the forming of histories, the planning of initiatives, the progression of ideas. As projects emerge from PARC, we hope that they will contribute to our understanding of this remarkable and many layered visual culture. Professor Val Williams Director of PARC
01|02
Photography and the Archive Research Centre University of the Arts London London College of Communication Elephant and Castle London SE1 6SB UK
01|02
INVENTORY 01
Inventory Issue 1
It has made links with its immediate locale and the community of the Elephant and Castle, through its collaboration with the LCC School of Media in the Elephant Vanishes project, and, through this emerging research, has engaged with the many and different voices which sound echo through the inner city.
TATE MODERN/PARC SEMINARS THE VISUAL ARCHIVE: HISTORY, EVIDENCE AND MAKE BELIEVE In October and November 2004, PARC collaborated with Tate Modern in a seven week series of seminars which explored the mysterious, provoking and ambiguous world of the archive. The seminars brought together artists, writers, historians, archivists and others to discuss the meaning, breadth and consequences of visual repositories. From the municipal archive to the invented history, the series considered ways in which the nature of truth and evidence are constantly contested and revised. Individual seminars focused around collections, hoards, imaginary archives, artists’ archives and family archives, as well as films and writings which explored different aspects of the archive. The seminars were research-level, and attracted participants from photography practice, archival studies, visual history and culture. Held in the atmospheric space of the Tate Modern’s East Room, speakers included artist and writer Rachel Lichtenstein, artist Joachim Schmid, Adrian Amos of Lassco Salvage, academic and writer Nicola Gregson, museum curator and collector Stella Mitchell, forensic archaeologist Tim Thompson, Artist Neil Cummings, broadcaster Alan Dein, visual anthropologist Elizabeth Edwards, photographer Derek Ridgers, writer/curator Alistair O Neill and sonic artist Graeme Miller.
USEFUL STITCHES In 2003, photographer Laura Thomas and curator Val Williams made a response to a group of infant’s dresses which were part of the archive used for the ecHo project, a collaboration between the Queensland University of Technology and the London College of Fashion. The garments used in the ecHo project were unwanted objects, either too damaged or too commonplace to be useful in a museum collection. Artists and designers attached to both LCF and the University of Queensland were invited to respond to these objects. The dresses seemed to epitomize the anonymous and enigmatic narrative possibilities within the ecHo project. Preserved as testimonies of birth and survival, each garment was once part of a personal and private family archive. This work of photography and text explores hidden narratives within these mute objects. The Visual Archive: History, Evidence and Make Believe Tate Modern October + November 2004
The project looked beyond the photography of fashion, establishing its importance as an interrogator of archive and history, as well as its acknowledged status as an interpreter of the here and now.
03|04
The exhibition was held at the Atrium Gallery at LCC in Spring 2005.
INVENTORY 01
Useful Stitches LCC , Atrium Gallery Spring 2005
Laura Thomas has produced a set of photographs of fragments of the garments, tears, stains, mends, spots- exposing partial histories. Val Williams has used found texts from Agnes M. Miall’s Complete Needlecraft published in London in 1941.
TATE MODERN/PARC SEMINARS THE VISUAL ARCHIVE: HISTORY, EVIDENCE AND MAKE BELIEVE In October and November 2004, PARC collaborated with Tate Modern in a seven week series of seminars which explored the mysterious, provoking and ambiguous world of the archive. The seminars brought together artists, writers, historians, archivists and others to discuss the meaning, breadth and consequences of visual repositories. From the municipal archive to the invented history, the series considered ways in which the nature of truth and evidence are constantly contested and revised. Individual seminars focused around collections, hoards, imaginary archives, artists’ archives and family archives, as well as films and writings which explored different aspects of the archive. The seminars were research-level, and attracted participants from photography practice, archival studies, visual history and culture. Held in the atmospheric space of the Tate Modern’s East Room, speakers included artist and writer Rachel Lichtenstein, artist Joachim Schmid, Adrian Amos of Lassco Salvage, academic and writer Nicola Gregson, museum curator and collector Stella Mitchell, forensic archaeologist Tim Thompson, Artist Neil Cummings, broadcaster Alan Dein, visual anthropologist Elizabeth Edwards, photographer Derek Ridgers, writer/curator Alistair O Neill and sonic artist Graeme Miller.
USEFUL STITCHES In 2003, photographer Laura Thomas and curator Val Williams made a response to a group of infant’s dresses which were part of the archive used for the ecHo project, a collaboration between the Queensland University of Technology and the London College of Fashion. The garments used in the ecHo project were unwanted objects, either too damaged or too commonplace to be useful in a museum collection. Artists and designers attached to both LCF and the University of Queensland were invited to respond to these objects. The dresses seemed to epitomize the anonymous and enigmatic narrative possibilities within the ecHo project. Preserved as testimonies of birth and survival, each garment was once part of a personal and private family archive. This work of photography and text explores hidden narratives within these mute objects. The Visual Archive: History, Evidence and Make Believe Tate Modern October + November 2004
The project looked beyond the photography of fashion, establishing its importance as an interrogator of archive and history, as well as its acknowledged status as an interpreter of the here and now.
03|04
The exhibition was held at the Atrium Gallery at LCC in Spring 2005.
INVENTORY 01
Useful Stitches LCC , Atrium Gallery Spring 2005
Laura Thomas has produced a set of photographs of fragments of the garments, tears, stains, mends, spots- exposing partial histories. Val Williams has used found texts from Agnes M. Miall’s Complete Needlecraft published in London in 1941.
UNFOLDING THE TISSUE: Fashion and the Archive Study Day at the Rootstein Hopkins Space, London College of Fashion, December 2004 This study day explored the Fashion Archive. The speakers included those who study archives, who preserve and disseminate them and who use them as a basis for their own practice. The archive underpins our understanding of fashion, informing us about the history of dress, changing technologies, the representation of fashion through photography, advertising and film, and gives access to the memories and testimonies of those who have played a part in the forming of fashion. Coinciding with the Echo project at LCF, the study day examined this significant and under-explored area. Speakers and responders were Charlotte Cotton (V&A); Sandy Black (LCF); Amy de la Haye (LCF); artist/photographers Derek Ridgers, Nick Clements and Warren Neidich; Carol Tulloch (Chelsea/V&A); Alistair O Neill (LCF); Marketa Uhlirova (Central St Martins); Gillian Brewer (National Army Museum); Stella Mitchell (Land of Lost Content Museum); Oriole Cullen (Museum of London); Jan Farrell (Cordwainers); Alison Shreeve (LCF); Katherine Baird (LCF); Chloe Veale (History of Advertising Trust); Roger Hargreaves (National Portrait Gallery); Suzi Vaughan (Queensland University of Technology); Dan Sinclair (Aardman Animations); Helen Thomas (LCF); Ed Barber (LCF); Mark Haworth-Booth (UAL Visiting Professor).
FIELDSTUDY 4
Accompanied by Fieldstudy 4 Fieldstudy 4
UNSEEN AGENTS A PARC research project from artist Clare Strand, funded by the Arts Council England. Spirit Photography Investigated: Photography and the Adolescent Under Laboratory Conditions.
Nick Clements 1958 Bath 3 From Fieldstudy 4
INVENTORY 01
05|06
This research project will result in a new body of photographic work exploring supposed psychic emanations from the adolescent child and the often-assumed capacity of the photographic medium to accurately record non-physical phenomena. The work will challenge existing modes of photographic practice, which claim to communicate an objective truth. Existing ‘objective’ means of photography more associated with pseudo-scientific practice (now generally looked on as being not worthy of regard) will be utilized to make a new and unsuspected context relevant to contemporary photography and image making practice, for example, the photography of the aura, Kirilian photography, spirit photography, séance imagery, ectoplasmic emanation, cinematic trickery and phantasmagorical displays.
UNFOLDING THE TISSUE: Fashion and the Archive Study Day at the Rootstein Hopkins Space, London College of Fashion, December 2004 This study day explored the Fashion Archive. The speakers included those who study archives, who preserve and disseminate them and who use them as a basis for their own practice. The archive underpins our understanding of fashion, informing us about the history of dress, changing technologies, the representation of fashion through photography, advertising and film, and gives access to the memories and testimonies of those who have played a part in the forming of fashion. Coinciding with the Echo project at LCF, the study day examined this significant and under-explored area. Speakers and responders were Charlotte Cotton (V&A); Sandy Black (LCF); Amy de la Haye (LCF); artist/photographers Derek Ridgers, Nick Clements and Warren Neidich; Carol Tulloch (Chelsea/V&A); Alistair O Neill (LCF); Marketa Uhlirova (Central St Martins); Gillian Brewer (National Army Museum); Stella Mitchell (Land of Lost Content Museum); Oriole Cullen (Museum of London); Jan Farrell (Cordwainers); Alison Shreeve (LCF); Katherine Baird (LCF); Chloe Veale (History of Advertising Trust); Roger Hargreaves (National Portrait Gallery); Suzi Vaughan (Queensland University of Technology); Dan Sinclair (Aardman Animations); Helen Thomas (LCF); Ed Barber (LCF); Mark Haworth-Booth (UAL Visiting Professor).
FIELDSTUDY 4
Accompanied by Fieldstudy 4 Fieldstudy 4
UNSEEN AGENTS A PARC research project from artist Clare Strand, funded by the Arts Council England. Spirit Photography Investigated: Photography and the Adolescent Under Laboratory Conditions.
Nick Clements 1958 Bath 3 From Fieldstudy 4
INVENTORY 01
05|06
This research project will result in a new body of photographic work exploring supposed psychic emanations from the adolescent child and the often-assumed capacity of the photographic medium to accurately record non-physical phenomena. The work will challenge existing modes of photographic practice, which claim to communicate an objective truth. Existing ‘objective’ means of photography more associated with pseudo-scientific practice (now generally looked on as being not worthy of regard) will be utilized to make a new and unsuspected context relevant to contemporary photography and image making practice, for example, the photography of the aura, Kirilian photography, spirit photography, séance imagery, ectoplasmic emanation, cinematic trickery and phantasmagorical displays.
JUST ONE PICTURE The first series of research seminars organized by PARC. April –May 2005. AL ISTAIR O NEIL L N ICK CL EME NTS SAN DY BLACK CH LO E VEALE WARR EN NEIDICH KATHE RINE BAIRD JAN FARR EL L AMY DE L A HAYE O RIO LE CULLE N STEL LA MITCH ELL R O GER H AR GR EAVE S MARKE TA UH LIR OVA DE RE K R IDG ERS SUZI VAUGH AN ALISON SH RE EVE CARO L TULLOCH
Working with Wiebke Leister and students on the MA Photography course at LCC, PARC invited six curators, academics and artists to select and talk about one photograph at four Tuesday evening seminars in the spring of 2005. By placing the image in its social and aesthetic context, many meanings and implications were explored. FIELDSTUDY A series of publications from PARC exploring the visual archive. Fieldstudy 1 Research-based practice by Anna Fox, Jason Wilde, Colin Jarvie and Clare Strand.
Top: Jan Farrell Summer balmoral boot, c1905 Cordwainers shoe collection Right: Alistair O’Neill Wolf Suschitszky, Man having his shoes shined, Charing Cross Road, London, c1937
1 0 11
Fieldstudy 5
6
Fieldstudy 2 Roma Tearne Fieldstudy 3 Charged Atmospheres: new work from Alison Marchant Fieldstudy 4 Unfolding the Tissue Fashion and the Archive Fieldstudy 5 Archives of the New British Photography 1967-81 Fieldstudy 6 Private Museum
Fieldstudy 3
To receive free copies of Fieldstudy contact Lorna Crabbe at PARC l.crabbe@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Spread from Fieldstudy 4
The final session was organized by the MA students, of whom five spoke about their own work with the photographic archive. PARC is now working with this postgraduate group on the exhibition Family Archives Lost and Found to be shown at the Atrium Gallery at LCC in October 2005
PAT, DO YOU STILL USE THESE? Val Williams and Alistair O Neill at the Fashion Photography Conference at London College of Fashion. An Extract from Katherine’s Baird’s report on the conference: The Fashion Photography Conference was held in the Rootstein Hopkins Space on Friday 3 June to celebrate the on line publication of The Woolmark Company Archive on the AHDS Visual Arts website (http://ahds.ac.uk/visualarts/collections/index.htm). Val Williams and Alistair O Neill (and a team of assistants) then took to the stage with a multimedia talk on the LCF slide collection entitled Pat, do you still use these? A little mise en scene was created with a sixties table and orange table lamp complete with lady flicking through magazines and clicking through a slides show on an ancient caramate while Alistair and Val spoke about the history of slides and the current debate on slides v digital images. Alistair referred to the LLR survey and report Still Images and the Digital Future and the AHDS/JISC consultation The Digital Picture. We were treated to a typical travelogue on New Zealand mimicking the family slide shows that used to occur after a holiday. Both spoke warmly about the increasingly rose-coloured treasure trove that is the LCF slide collection and finished with a brilliant recreation of a 1974 fashions tape slide programme held in the collection, created originally by the International Wool Secretariat, with Maggie Norden doing a brilliant voice-over of the original script.
07|08
Alistair O Neill (LCF) is a PARC Associate .
Alison Marchant Charged Atmospheres Fieldstudy 3
INVENTORY 01
Fieldstudy 3
fieldstudy no1
F IE LD STU DY 4
Fieldstudy 6
Front: Derek Ridgers Theresa, Hell, 1980
The sessions were led by Sophie Howarth (Tate Modern); Dominic Willsdon (Tate Modern); Roger Hargreaves (National Portrait Gallery); Mark Haworth-Booth (Visiting Professor UAL); Roma Tearne (AHRB Fellow, Oxford Brookes); Wiebke Leister (LCC).
JUST ONE PICTURE The first series of research seminars organized by PARC. April –May 2005. AL ISTAIR O NEIL L N ICK CL EME NTS SAN DY BLACK CH LO E VEALE WARR EN NEIDICH KATHE RINE BAIRD JAN FARR EL L AMY DE L A HAYE O RIO LE CULLE N STEL LA MITCH ELL R O GER H AR GR EAVE S MARKE TA UH LIR OVA DE RE K R IDG ERS SUZI VAUGH AN ALISON SH RE EVE CARO L TULLOCH
Working with Wiebke Leister and students on the MA Photography course at LCC, PARC invited six curators, academics and artists to select and talk about one photograph at four Tuesday evening seminars in the spring of 2005. By placing the image in its social and aesthetic context, many meanings and implications were explored. FIELDSTUDY A series of publications from PARC exploring the visual archive. Fieldstudy 1 Research-based practice by Anna Fox, Jason Wilde, Colin Jarvie and Clare Strand.
Top: Jan Farrell Summer balmoral boot, c1905 Cordwainers shoe collection Right: Alistair O’Neill Wolf Suschitszky, Man having his shoes shined, Charing Cross Road, London, c1937
1 0 11
Fieldstudy 5
6
Fieldstudy 2 Roma Tearne Fieldstudy 3 Charged Atmospheres: new work from Alison Marchant Fieldstudy 4 Unfolding the Tissue Fashion and the Archive Fieldstudy 5 Archives of the New British Photography 1967-81 Fieldstudy 6 Private Museum
Fieldstudy 3
To receive free copies of Fieldstudy contact Lorna Crabbe at PARC l.crabbe@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Spread from Fieldstudy 4
The final session was organized by the MA students, of whom five spoke about their own work with the photographic archive. PARC is now working with this postgraduate group on the exhibition Family Archives Lost and Found to be shown at the Atrium Gallery at LCC in October 2005
PAT, DO YOU STILL USE THESE? Val Williams and Alistair O Neill at the Fashion Photography Conference at London College of Fashion. An Extract from Katherine’s Baird’s report on the conference: The Fashion Photography Conference was held in the Rootstein Hopkins Space on Friday 3 June to celebrate the on line publication of The Woolmark Company Archive on the AHDS Visual Arts website (http://ahds.ac.uk/visualarts/collections/index.htm). Val Williams and Alistair O Neill (and a team of assistants) then took to the stage with a multimedia talk on the LCF slide collection entitled Pat, do you still use these? A little mise en scene was created with a sixties table and orange table lamp complete with lady flicking through magazines and clicking through a slides show on an ancient caramate while Alistair and Val spoke about the history of slides and the current debate on slides v digital images. Alistair referred to the LLR survey and report Still Images and the Digital Future and the AHDS/JISC consultation The Digital Picture. We were treated to a typical travelogue on New Zealand mimicking the family slide shows that used to occur after a holiday. Both spoke warmly about the increasingly rose-coloured treasure trove that is the LCF slide collection and finished with a brilliant recreation of a 1974 fashions tape slide programme held in the collection, created originally by the International Wool Secretariat, with Maggie Norden doing a brilliant voice-over of the original script.
07|08
Alistair O Neill (LCF) is a PARC Associate .
Alison Marchant Charged Atmospheres Fieldstudy 3
INVENTORY 01
Fieldstudy 3
fieldstudy no1
F IE LD STU DY 4
Fieldstudy 6
Front: Derek Ridgers Theresa, Hell, 1980
The sessions were led by Sophie Howarth (Tate Modern); Dominic Willsdon (Tate Modern); Roger Hargreaves (National Portrait Gallery); Mark Haworth-Booth (Visiting Professor UAL); Roma Tearne (AHRB Fellow, Oxford Brookes); Wiebke Leister (LCC).
THE PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION POSTER PROJECT
THE ELEPHANT VANISHES STUDY DAY LCC April 2005
Photographic exhibition posters are a fascinating and all too ephemeral part of photographic history. They are part of photography’s narrative, and form a visual history of the public exhibiting of photography. At PARC, the Poster Project aims to collect and preserve a substantial collection of these fragile objects. Already in the collection is an important donation of posters promoting exhibitions by Martin Parr since the early Seventies, including the poster for the first showing of Home Sweet Home at the Impressions Gallery York in the summer of 1974. Designed by Andrew Sproxton with Letraset, and showing one of Parr’s plastic-framed black and white photographs of English suburbia, it is a testament to the ‘handmade’ production which emerged from small regional photo galleries at the beginning of the independent photography movement.
‘And London is the people’s city. That is why Petticoat Lane is more London than Park Lane. And that is why London is the Mile End Road and the Walworth Road and the Lambeth Road and the Elephant and Castle. Strange, isn’t it, how much of the real London still lies south of the river, just as it did in Shakespeare’s day, and in Chaucer’s day before him? It is as though across the Thames- in London’s Deep South- times and manners haven’t changed so much as in the Parliamentary North.’ Norman Collins: London Belongs to Me. Published by William Collins, London. 1945
As well as Parr’s gift to the collection, the Impressions Gallery donation, from its archives, is also significant. Included in this set of objects is the poster which advertised the Arts Council touring exhibition Neue Sachlichkeit Photography, designed by Judy Cramond and illustrated by a 1928 photograph by Max Burchartz. Battered and frayed, but surviving the vicissitudes of personal collections, are the large -scale posters for the Diane Arbus exhibition (shown at the Hayward Gallery in 1974) and the Barbican’s 1989 Through the Looking Glass: Photography in Britain 1945-1989, designed by Arefin and Arefin for the exhibition curated by Gerry Badger and John Benton Harris. The poster for Mysterious Coincidences: New British Colour Photography, was designed by Michael Farish, printed by Jackson Wilson in Leeds and typeset at the Central School of Art and Design. Illustrated by a photograph from Keith Arnatt’s 1987 series Miss Grace’s Lane, the exhibition explored work by some of the central figures in Eighties colour photography, including Martin Parr, Boyd Webb, Paul Graham and Ron O’ Donnell. Curated by Alexandra Noble and Susan Beardmore, for the Photographers’ Gallery, the show was an acknowledgement of the importance of new colour documentary in the rapidly changing UK photographic arena. Likewise, the modest poster for Anna Fox’s Basingstoke 85/86 show, which opened at F.stop Photography, Bath, in March 1987 shows the arrival of the second generation of British colour documentarists (including Fox, Paul Reas, Paul Seawright and Nick Waplington) on the UK gallery scene. The housing of the collection at LCC is particularly apt, as the college (as LCP) has produced numerous significant poster designers. For many years, designer Tom Eckersley was LCP’s Head of Graphics. His innovative modern design for clients who included The Post Office, Shell and the Imperial War Museum is now preserved as part of the College’s archive.
Euan Duff
ARCHIVES FROM THE NEW BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE 1970S A collaboration between PARC, Photoworks UK and the University of Sussex An exhibition and conference examining the Euan Duff archive at the Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex and Peter Mitchell’s New Refutation of the Viking IV Space Mission. This collaboration underpins PARC’s research into the emergence of a new British photography and the structures which supported it, from the period 1967-1981. 5 October 2005 – 27 November 2005 Gardner Arts Centre, University of Sussex Conference: Saturday 15 October 2005 11am-5pm
The need to record and document is particularly acute at a time of change. The Elephant and Castle is now facing major transformation. Over the next decade, during which demolition and rebuilding will take place, the Elephant and Castle will become the focus of desires and ambitions, frustrations and regrets. It will be rebuilt because it is deemed as being ‘unsatisfactory’, its ageing pink shopping centre and the mirrored cube at the heart of the traffic roundabout being seen now as a somewhat shameful experiment in modernity. Its massive estates are now seen as being an antiquated and unsightly solution to the housing needs of this part of London. Elephant and Castle will undoubtedly, over the next ten years, become the focus for political, social and aesthetic debates. Sitting at the very centre of the Elephant, the London College of Communication is well positioned to both observe and contribute to those debates. It is as much a part of, and a landmark in, this part of South East London as is the Shopping Centre and the steel cube. The project, of documentation and interaction, which is emerging from the School of Media and the Photography and the Archive Research Centre will be a multi- layered one, to do with the present and the past, with histories and history, realities and all the fictions which emerge from them. It will involve photographers and filmmakers, sonic and graphic artists, architects, thinkers, writers and those who are curious about what has been, what might be, and what is. The study day was a gathering together of different voices, beginning an ongoing conversation about space, place and the city. Speakers included sonic and visual artists, writers, architects, anthropologists and geographers and included: Mark Haworth-Booth (UAL Visiting Professor); Sophie Howarth (Tate Modern); Roger Hargreaves (National Portrait Gallery); Simon Herron and Susanne Isa (Bartlett School of Architecture); Elizabeth Edwards (Pitt Rivers Museum); Peter Cusack (Sonic Arts, LCC); Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg (Photographers); Sandra Koa-Wing (Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex); David Chandler (Photoworks UK); Paul Halliday (Photography & Urban Cultures, Goldsmiths College)
DIRECTORY OF BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTIONS Janice Hart and Bob Pullen
INVENTORY 01
A core PARC project, to create what will be a unique directory of all the publicly accessible photographic collections that reside within a multiplicity of institutions in the UK. It will provide its users with a level of information that will assist them to locate photographs pertinent to their research. The intended users of this directory will be drawn from a wide range of interest groups; academic, curators, historians, students, picture researchers, family historians etc.
09|10
The posters were featured in Next Level magazine in 2004
THE PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION POSTER PROJECT
THE ELEPHANT VANISHES STUDY DAY LCC April 2005
Photographic exhibition posters are a fascinating and all too ephemeral part of photographic history. They are part of photography’s narrative, and form a visual history of the public exhibiting of photography. At PARC, the Poster Project aims to collect and preserve a substantial collection of these fragile objects. Already in the collection is an important donation of posters promoting exhibitions by Martin Parr since the early Seventies, including the poster for the first showing of Home Sweet Home at the Impressions Gallery York in the summer of 1974. Designed by Andrew Sproxton with Letraset, and showing one of Parr’s plastic-framed black and white photographs of English suburbia, it is a testament to the ‘handmade’ production which emerged from small regional photo galleries at the beginning of the independent photography movement.
‘And London is the people’s city. That is why Petticoat Lane is more London than Park Lane. And that is why London is the Mile End Road and the Walworth Road and the Lambeth Road and the Elephant and Castle. Strange, isn’t it, how much of the real London still lies south of the river, just as it did in Shakespeare’s day, and in Chaucer’s day before him? It is as though across the Thames- in London’s Deep South- times and manners haven’t changed so much as in the Parliamentary North.’ Norman Collins: London Belongs to Me. Published by William Collins, London. 1945
As well as Parr’s gift to the collection, the Impressions Gallery donation, from its archives, is also significant. Included in this set of objects is the poster which advertised the Arts Council touring exhibition Neue Sachlichkeit Photography, designed by Judy Cramond and illustrated by a 1928 photograph by Max Burchartz. Battered and frayed, but surviving the vicissitudes of personal collections, are the large -scale posters for the Diane Arbus exhibition (shown at the Hayward Gallery in 1974) and the Barbican’s 1989 Through the Looking Glass: Photography in Britain 1945-1989, designed by Arefin and Arefin for the exhibition curated by Gerry Badger and John Benton Harris. The poster for Mysterious Coincidences: New British Colour Photography, was designed by Michael Farish, printed by Jackson Wilson in Leeds and typeset at the Central School of Art and Design. Illustrated by a photograph from Keith Arnatt’s 1987 series Miss Grace’s Lane, the exhibition explored work by some of the central figures in Eighties colour photography, including Martin Parr, Boyd Webb, Paul Graham and Ron O’ Donnell. Curated by Alexandra Noble and Susan Beardmore, for the Photographers’ Gallery, the show was an acknowledgement of the importance of new colour documentary in the rapidly changing UK photographic arena. Likewise, the modest poster for Anna Fox’s Basingstoke 85/86 show, which opened at F.stop Photography, Bath, in March 1987 shows the arrival of the second generation of British colour documentarists (including Fox, Paul Reas, Paul Seawright and Nick Waplington) on the UK gallery scene. The housing of the collection at LCC is particularly apt, as the college (as LCP) has produced numerous significant poster designers. For many years, designer Tom Eckersley was LCP’s Head of Graphics. His innovative modern design for clients who included The Post Office, Shell and the Imperial War Museum is now preserved as part of the College’s archive.
Euan Duff
ARCHIVES FROM THE NEW BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE 1970S A collaboration between PARC, Photoworks UK and the University of Sussex An exhibition and conference examining the Euan Duff archive at the Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex and Peter Mitchell’s New Refutation of the Viking IV Space Mission. This collaboration underpins PARC’s research into the emergence of a new British photography and the structures which supported it, from the period 1967-1981. 5 October 2005 – 27 November 2005 Gardner Arts Centre, University of Sussex Conference: Saturday 15 October 2005 11am-5pm
The need to record and document is particularly acute at a time of change. The Elephant and Castle is now facing major transformation. Over the next decade, during which demolition and rebuilding will take place, the Elephant and Castle will become the focus of desires and ambitions, frustrations and regrets. It will be rebuilt because it is deemed as being ‘unsatisfactory’, its ageing pink shopping centre and the mirrored cube at the heart of the traffic roundabout being seen now as a somewhat shameful experiment in modernity. Its massive estates are now seen as being an antiquated and unsightly solution to the housing needs of this part of London. Elephant and Castle will undoubtedly, over the next ten years, become the focus for political, social and aesthetic debates. Sitting at the very centre of the Elephant, the London College of Communication is well positioned to both observe and contribute to those debates. It is as much a part of, and a landmark in, this part of South East London as is the Shopping Centre and the steel cube. The project, of documentation and interaction, which is emerging from the School of Media and the Photography and the Archive Research Centre will be a multi- layered one, to do with the present and the past, with histories and history, realities and all the fictions which emerge from them. It will involve photographers and filmmakers, sonic and graphic artists, architects, thinkers, writers and those who are curious about what has been, what might be, and what is. The study day was a gathering together of different voices, beginning an ongoing conversation about space, place and the city. Speakers included sonic and visual artists, writers, architects, anthropologists and geographers and included: Mark Haworth-Booth (UAL Visiting Professor); Sophie Howarth (Tate Modern); Roger Hargreaves (National Portrait Gallery); Simon Herron and Susanne Isa (Bartlett School of Architecture); Elizabeth Edwards (Pitt Rivers Museum); Peter Cusack (Sonic Arts, LCC); Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg (Photographers); Sandra Koa-Wing (Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex); David Chandler (Photoworks UK); Paul Halliday (Photography & Urban Cultures, Goldsmiths College)
DIRECTORY OF BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTIONS Janice Hart and Bob Pullen
INVENTORY 01
A core PARC project, to create what will be a unique directory of all the publicly accessible photographic collections that reside within a multiplicity of institutions in the UK. It will provide its users with a level of information that will assist them to locate photographs pertinent to their research. The intended users of this directory will be drawn from a wide range of interest groups; academic, curators, historians, students, picture researchers, family historians etc.
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The posters were featured in Next Level magazine in 2004
WHEN WE WERE YOUNG: DEREK RIDGERS CLUB AND STREET PORTRAITS 1978-1987 Val Williams Photoworks 2004 Over a period of ten years, from 1978 to 1987, British photographer Derek Ridgers painstakingly recorded the young inhabitants of London’s streets and Soho’s fashionable club scene. His resulting portraits of skinheads and the extravagant and exotic figures of the post-punk, New Romantic era are a remarkable and fragile social document, a record of an incredibly inventive yet excessive youth culture. Many of Ridgers’s young subjects, such as Boy George and Steve Strange, went on to achieve fame and wider notoriety, but here they exist together in a self-regarding but vulnerable sub-culture, wan angels of the London night. Derek Ridgers’s compulsion to photograph London clubs over two decades was an extraordinary one. He has produced thousands of remarkable photographs of remarkable people, transient beings moving across an urban landscape, experimenters, flamboyant souls who cared more than anything about how they looked and whose greatest fear was of being ordinary. But it was the ordinariness that Derek Ridgers glimpsed in these costumed characters that makes his photographs so powerful. Ridgers’s photographs are an undeliberate chapter in a decade of English social and cultural history which changed the way we thought about music, fashion and consumption. It was the decade of the handmade and the customised, of Oxfam shopping, conspicuous sexuality, of excess, wide success and dismal failure. Played out against the backdrop of a rapidly changing London cityscape and a revolution in politics and economics, the style cultures that Derek Ridgers photographed meant far more than style.
Derek Ridgers Trojan and Mark, Taboo 1986
INVENTORY 01
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This book brings together Ridgers’s extraordinary photographs for the first time. Part photography monograph, part fashion history, part momento mori, this beautiful book also encapsulates the essence of Ridgers’s work and his influential role as quiet observer and collector of British street style.
WHEN WE WERE YOUNG: DEREK RIDGERS CLUB AND STREET PORTRAITS 1978-1987 Val Williams Photoworks 2004 Over a period of ten years, from 1978 to 1987, British photographer Derek Ridgers painstakingly recorded the young inhabitants of London’s streets and Soho’s fashionable club scene. His resulting portraits of skinheads and the extravagant and exotic figures of the post-punk, New Romantic era are a remarkable and fragile social document, a record of an incredibly inventive yet excessive youth culture. Many of Ridgers’s young subjects, such as Boy George and Steve Strange, went on to achieve fame and wider notoriety, but here they exist together in a self-regarding but vulnerable sub-culture, wan angels of the London night. Derek Ridgers’s compulsion to photograph London clubs over two decades was an extraordinary one. He has produced thousands of remarkable photographs of remarkable people, transient beings moving across an urban landscape, experimenters, flamboyant souls who cared more than anything about how they looked and whose greatest fear was of being ordinary. But it was the ordinariness that Derek Ridgers glimpsed in these costumed characters that makes his photographs so powerful. Ridgers’s photographs are an undeliberate chapter in a decade of English social and cultural history which changed the way we thought about music, fashion and consumption. It was the decade of the handmade and the customised, of Oxfam shopping, conspicuous sexuality, of excess, wide success and dismal failure. Played out against the backdrop of a rapidly changing London cityscape and a revolution in politics and economics, the style cultures that Derek Ridgers photographed meant far more than style.
Derek Ridgers Trojan and Mark, Taboo 1986
INVENTORY 01
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This book brings together Ridgers’s extraordinary photographs for the first time. Part photography monograph, part fashion history, part momento mori, this beautiful book also encapsulates the essence of Ridgers’s work and his influential role as quiet observer and collector of British street style.
PAM SKELTON CONSPIRACY DWELLINGS AND OBJECTS THE STASI RING UNVEILED
The addresses of 500 Stasi conspiracy dwellings, active from 1980 – 89, came to light after archivist Achim Heinrich and artist Pam Skelton made a request to the Central Archive for the Records of the State Security Service in the former GDR in Berlin for the ‘lost’ file which contained them. Skelton and Heinrich had searched for two years for the ‘conspiracy dwellings’ (Konspiritorial Wohnungen) of our sample city. The project aims to map these sites and to develop a model that could be used for exploring contemporary patterns of surveillance and control. These issues will be explored and disseminated through narratives, photography and video work developed by a multidisciplinary team of artists and archivists.
PARC is supporting Pam Skelton (CSM PARC Associate) in this ongoing research
‘When attempting to place the work of Magnum photographers within a history of photography made in Ireland, one soon becomes aware of how fragmentary and unwritten both of those histories are. Like so much else in Ireland, photography is a contested territory. The conflict between Ireland as a place to be looked at, and a country which looks at itself is, in photographic terms, an instructive one. From the travel books of the 1960s, which portrayed Ireland as a misty, boggy place with no inhabitants, apart from a picturesque child or an occasional character on a donkey, to the images of a war torn North, which gained currency across the world through publication in the press, the view of Ireland in photographs has always been a partial and biased one.’ ‘From Bruce Davidson’s unseen series on the Duffy Circus travelling the Ireland in the Sixties to the never before published colour photographs of the 12 July celebrations in Belfast in the early Sixties, when the Troubles had not yet started and children from both sides of the divide helped building the bonfires as a neighbourhood event every story conjures up visions of world gone by. It was a challenge to edit down the enormous amount of material in the archive dealing with the Troubles in the North- with atrocities at their height in the Seventies and Eighties and the large selection of hard hitting black and white images of the Troubles in the Seventies and Eighties taken by Abbas, Berry, Barbey, Freed and Steele Perkins –and again Philip Jones Griffiths and many others are but a fraction of what can be seen in the Magnum archive.’
Extract from Magnum Ireland Brigitte Lardinois and Val Williams Thames and Hudson September 2005
Ian Berry Magnum Photos From Magnum Ireland
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In what appears to be an ordinary and everyday urban landscape the familiar is transformed from being benign to a network of deception as it was in the times of the GDR. We are reminded that coercion, fear and control do not only take place in dank and cruel places but in our own back yards. In this way the familiar, ordinary and everyday architecture of daily life becomes implicated with the legacy of its extraordinary history.
MAGNUM IRELAND Research into the Magnum Photos archive by Val Williams with Brigitte Lardinois (Magnum). This research, which uncovered many previously unpublished bodies of work is disseminated through the Magnum Ireland book and an exhibition in preparation for the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
INVENTORY 01
The Konspiritorial Wohnungen (conspiracy dwellings) are neither fiction nor fabrication but a reality that frames the history of East German cities today. Stasi officers and their unofficial informers would meet in a designated place at a specified time on a regular basis. Their reports often contained banal but potentially personal incriminatory information on targeted individuals, friends, family, colleagues who were under surveillance. The conspiracy dwellings were situated throughout the cities in civic and domestic spaces, in hotels, café’s, homes, cars, public buildings, offices, cars, telephone boxes, and sheds, that were established specifically for the purpose of meetings.
PAM SKELTON CONSPIRACY DWELLINGS AND OBJECTS THE STASI RING UNVEILED
The addresses of 500 Stasi conspiracy dwellings, active from 1980 – 89, came to light after archivist Achim Heinrich and artist Pam Skelton made a request to the Central Archive for the Records of the State Security Service in the former GDR in Berlin for the ‘lost’ file which contained them. Skelton and Heinrich had searched for two years for the ‘conspiracy dwellings’ (Konspiritorial Wohnungen) of our sample city. The project aims to map these sites and to develop a model that could be used for exploring contemporary patterns of surveillance and control. These issues will be explored and disseminated through narratives, photography and video work developed by a multidisciplinary team of artists and archivists.
PARC is supporting Pam Skelton (CSM PARC Associate) in this ongoing research
‘When attempting to place the work of Magnum photographers within a history of photography made in Ireland, one soon becomes aware of how fragmentary and unwritten both of those histories are. Like so much else in Ireland, photography is a contested territory. The conflict between Ireland as a place to be looked at, and a country which looks at itself is, in photographic terms, an instructive one. From the travel books of the 1960s, which portrayed Ireland as a misty, boggy place with no inhabitants, apart from a picturesque child or an occasional character on a donkey, to the images of a war torn North, which gained currency across the world through publication in the press, the view of Ireland in photographs has always been a partial and biased one.’ ‘From Bruce Davidson’s unseen series on the Duffy Circus travelling the Ireland in the Sixties to the never before published colour photographs of the 12 July celebrations in Belfast in the early Sixties, when the Troubles had not yet started and children from both sides of the divide helped building the bonfires as a neighbourhood event every story conjures up visions of world gone by. It was a challenge to edit down the enormous amount of material in the archive dealing with the Troubles in the North- with atrocities at their height in the Seventies and Eighties and the large selection of hard hitting black and white images of the Troubles in the Seventies and Eighties taken by Abbas, Berry, Barbey, Freed and Steele Perkins –and again Philip Jones Griffiths and many others are but a fraction of what can be seen in the Magnum archive.’
Extract from Magnum Ireland Brigitte Lardinois and Val Williams Thames and Hudson September 2005
Ian Berry Magnum Photos From Magnum Ireland
13|14
In what appears to be an ordinary and everyday urban landscape the familiar is transformed from being benign to a network of deception as it was in the times of the GDR. We are reminded that coercion, fear and control do not only take place in dank and cruel places but in our own back yards. In this way the familiar, ordinary and everyday architecture of daily life becomes implicated with the legacy of its extraordinary history.
MAGNUM IRELAND Research into the Magnum Photos archive by Val Williams with Brigitte Lardinois (Magnum). This research, which uncovered many previously unpublished bodies of work is disseminated through the Magnum Ireland book and an exhibition in preparation for the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
INVENTORY 01
The Konspiritorial Wohnungen (conspiracy dwellings) are neither fiction nor fabrication but a reality that frames the history of East German cities today. Stasi officers and their unofficial informers would meet in a designated place at a specified time on a regular basis. Their reports often contained banal but potentially personal incriminatory information on targeted individuals, friends, family, colleagues who were under surveillance. The conspiracy dwellings were situated throughout the cities in civic and domestic spaces, in hotels, café’s, homes, cars, public buildings, offices, cars, telephone boxes, and sheds, that were established specifically for the purpose of meetings.
Val Williams Director of PARC and UAL Professor of the History and Culture of Photography. Writer and curator, recent projects include Martin Parr: Photographic Works (Phaidon 2002) ; When We Were Young: Club and Street Photographs by Derek Ridgers (Photoworks 2004); Found and Vernacular Photography (Eye magazine 55 2004) . Forthcoming: Magnum Ireland (Thames and Hudson September 2005); Anna Fox: UK Dreaming (Photoworks 2005). Research interests: Found and vernacular photography; documentary photography 1950-; fashion and photography; the fashion archive. v.williams@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Photography and the Archive Research Centre STAFF
Bob Pullen was appointed as Research assistant in Spring 2005 to work on the Directory of British Photographic Collections project. He was a speaker at the Archives of British Photography From The 1970s conference at Sussex University in 2005, and at the the History Group of the Royal Photographic Society. He is also planning a study day in collaboration with Photo London for 2006. b.pullen@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Lorna Crabbe Administrator of PARC. Lorna joined the Centre in the summer of 2004, and has organized the Just One Picture Research Seminars, The Elephant Vanishes and Unfolding the Tissue study days, the Tate Modern seminar series (with Caroline Brimmer of TM), issues of Fieldstudy; Useful Stitches exhibition; Journey project meetings; Journal of Photographic Culture steering group meetings and selection panel and is currently organizing the Archives of the New British Photography of the 1970s conference and issues of Fieldstudy. She also participated in the writing of the ROAD and New British Photography AHRB bids and is collecting material for the Elephant Vanishes and Vernacular photography projects. l.crabbe@lcc.arts.ac.uk Roger Hargreaves Editor of the forthcoming Journal of Photography and Culture based at the UAL Photography and the Archive Research Centre to be published from Spring 2007. A writer and curator of photography, he is currently working on exhibitions and publications for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, London. r.hargreaves@lcc.arts.ac.uk