Manchester Studies Archive Nicaragua in the News Japanese Photography Reviewed Camera Obscura Camerawork 8 and the Political Photographer
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Travelling Boxing Booth, Lancashire 1936 Manchester Studies Archive Manchester Studies Archive Nicaragua in the News Japanese Photography reviewed Camera Obscura Camerawork 8 and the Political Photographer No.16 Half Moon Photography Workshop 60p/$1.75 CAMERAWORK 1 W orkmen building the M anchester Ship Canal, 1880’s Any Old Albums ? —building a people's history 7 think there was more good deeds, as regards getting the neighbourhood’s Original Burlesque Peggy-Leg Band, ponding information-books at Manchester Studies, this a man a job, in the Vault than ever came from the children at school and at play, Whit Sunday processions, collection is, in print form, being channelled into the Rectory or from the - where you sign on - Labour charabanc outings, carnivals and pageants, show his family appropriate local public collections. And we have come to Exchange. There was more jobs got, more good deeds standing in their front doorway on the eve of the sons’ realise that it is a collection which provokes just as many done in there, in the Vault.' embarkation for the Great War, and show those same people questions as it provides answers. individually photographed amongst the trappings of respec We receive innumerable straightforward appeals for ardly the stuff of the historian; especially tability and material prosperity which the local studio photo practical assistance, for example, ‘I’m a local librarian/ coming, as it does from a man recalling his grapher felt obliged to provide. These photographs comple teacher/community worker intending to put on an exhibi experiences of the Depression in a small, mented by appropriate extracts from transcribed tape- tion comparing the community spirit in Salford now and heavily industrialized and isolated part of Manchester. The recordings, have recently been included in an exhibition that fifty years ago; have you any photographs I might be able to affirmation of the practical help to be found as a matter of toured Manchester and Salford - an exhibition which, use?’ - which we’re well equipped and glad to deal with. course amongst the camaraderie and intimacy of the male judging by the response of librarians and public alike, has Apart from this, the one question that the existence, useful preserve at the local pub, and the denial of the efficacy of gone some way towards provoking a serious evaluation of the ness and ensured growth of the collection has answered is those agencies established to ‘assist those in need’, are the historical content of the family photograph album. that of the cynic: ‘But why go around begging people to let sort of notions that often crop up in conversation with people The photographs too are preserved, and permanently you have their old photographs, photographs that they them who were directly affected by the catastrophes of the available to anyone who wishes to use them. At present, they selves have dismissed to lie in an old biscuit tin under the Thirties. What may surprise, perhaps, is that this man’s constitute one of nearly nine hundred deposits in a collec stairs? What’s the point, whom does it help? Photographs memories of the home, childhood, school, work and leisure, tion totalling some fourteen thousand photographs. The can’t tell me much, they can’t provide the information that a as well as unemployment and poverty - in fact, of all the collection differs from the usual local history collecuon in its book, a scholarly work written by an expert, an historian routine and extraordinary in his life in that neighbourhood - emphasis on the human rather than the topographical. Its trained in the appropriate methodologies, statistical are preserved on tape, and are kept in the name of ‘history’. definitive and unique feature is the visual documentation of approaches and objectivity can provide.’ Thankfully, judg And so are those of many of his contemporaries and of their the individual and communal life of the working people of ing by the service we are increasingly being called on to children. Manchester and the North-West and the subject matter is provide for writers of history, this sort of attitude is on the This man has also kept a number of photographs taken in mainly families, families which make up the overwhelming wane with the realization that photographs give, by the his district during the early decades of the century; photo and, in most ways, historically by-passed proportion of the immediacy with which they communicate and by their graphs that, for instance, show local men setting off with population of the region. Whilst being systematically universal accessibility an extra, legitimate, dimension to the whippets to hunt rats and hares on a Sunday morning, show indexed and gathered in files of contact-prints and corres subject. If you have any comments to make or articles, letters or prints you would like to contribute we would be glad to hear from you. Please make sure it reaches us as soon as possible. is designed to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, views and information on photography SUBSCRIBE TO CAMERAWORK: A subscription to the magazine contributes TWICE as much and other forms of communication. By exploring the application, scope and content of photo to our income as a sale through a shop! graphy, we intend to demystify the process. We see this as part of the struggle to learn, to describe UK ABROAD ABROAD and to share experiences and so contribute to the process by which we grow in capacity and power (surface) (air) to control our lives. Full subscription* £6.50 £7.50 £10.50 Full subscription (student)* £5.00 £6.00 £9.00 This issue of Camerawork, November 1979, was produced by the Publishing Project, Half Moon Institutional Subscription* £12.00 £13.00 £17.00 Photography Workshop, 119 Roman Road, London E2. 01-980 8798. Printed by Expression Cam eraw ork only £4.50 £5.50 £8.00 * Printers Ltd, London N l. This includes posters and invitations for our exhibitions People who worked on this issue of Camerawork were Santiago Castrillon, Mike Goldwater, Liz To subscribe send remittance (abroad - STERLING DRAFT drawn on London please) to: Mackie, Jenny Matthews, Richard Platt, Shirley Read (co-ordinator), Siddhiratna, Mike Swift. H.M .P.W ., 119-121 Roman Road, L o n d o n E2 OQN. Tel: 01-980 8798. Distribution: Keith Cavanagh. (ISSN 0308 1676) 9 CAMERAWORK But the sort of feeling that has been commonly voiced, and which manifests itself in a distilled, change, or even complete disintegration, of long- and doubtless school-induced form, is the initial established neighbourhoods. It is in these reactions of many of the people to whom we go circumstances, when the compulsory purchase for photographs: ‘What? You don’t want to see orders have been served, and with change of me donkey-stoning the front-step, or setting off family home and transfer of small business as an eight-year old on a Band of Hope picnic. premises imminent and widespread, that many You’d much rather see this one of the old King of the most evocative and informative of records visiting Manchester.’ However, pictures of are lost - particularly photograph albums and informal, communally organised festivals, like the hordes of glass-slides and negatives accu street parties to celebrate a coronation, tell a mulated by long-gone local photographers, great deal about the neighbourhood life of past which are only to be found left behind in cellars generations and can contain a wealth of detail. At and sheds. the same time a snap of a renowned national Ironically, the destructive process of the figure can provide the same sort of detailed property developer and local council provide the information. For instance, A.J. Balfour opportunity for what, so far, has proved to be electioneering at Manchester City’s football one of the most successful methods of retrieving ground is also interesting for what it shows of the material. The residential area at the heart of composition, appearance and segregation of a Manchester’s Trafford Park industrial estate is 1900 football crowd, spectators in the standing now half-way demolished and will have vanished enclosure being exhorted by posters to ‘Beware within two years. The area was once, simply of Pickpockets’. because its location demanded it, a near self- But photographs of events and personalities, h sufficient community, a cluster of some seven whether they be local or national, whether taken hundred houses, built at the turn of the century m as ‘model dwellings’, for the ‘hands’ at the by someone in the crowd or a professional Studio group, Blackpool photographer, only tell half the story: the half nearby giant engineering and manufacturing that has always monopolised history and the works. The people there considered themselves attention of the historian. to be from Trafford Park and Trafford Park The reasons for a photograph of the King alone, rather than from Manchester or Stretford taking precedence, even today, over importance or whatever boundaries officialdom constructed and interest invested in a family collection, and around them. They were isolated and their over a photograph of the children playing in the isolation gave them a fierce love for their home- street, spring directly from the notion that place. history and documentation should be concerned As a result of an extensive programme of door- with the oustanding and extraordinary. Simi to-door leafleting, appeals in the local press and larly, studio portraits are seen as being more talks to the Community Centre, Senior Citizens publicly presentable than the comparative spon Club and the like, we managed to amass some taneity of a group taken in the backyard; just as seven hundred photographs, a variety of docu the formal, officially prescribed sort of record, ments and thirty hours of tape-recorded the filled-out form, is considered more valuable personal reminiscence.