Hi everyone, my name is Mark Hallett, and I'll be saying a few words of introduction in a moment, but we're just waiting now for everyone to join us online before we get going properly. So if you, if those of you already joined could be patient for a few more seconds, we'll just wait until we have a full run of participants and then we'll start properly. Thanks. Just waiting a few more seconds before we start in earnest. Wonderful. So, I think we'll start. Welcome everyone. My name is Mark Hallett, and I'm a director of studies at the Paul Mellon Center for studies in British art. I'd like to make a few opening remarks before turning over to Brett, Brett Rogers, director of the photographer's gallery will also be offering some words of introduction. First of all, I wanted to say that all of us at the center have been thrilled to work with Brett and her colleagues at the gallery in developing and organizing this remarkable three day conference series. With a critical focus on photography in Britain over the past five decades. This event fits perfectly into the PMC's own remit, supporting and generating research on histories of British art and visual culture of all periods. A remit which has seen us in recent years hosting numerous talks and workshops and conferences on aspects of photography. In time, of course, this event helps mark the 50th anniversary of one of Britain's most innovative and important cultural institutions, the photographer's gallery. Interestingly, this has its origins or so I remember the series or this conference has its origins or so I remember I think I've got this right. In a conversation I had with Brett in the autumn of 2016, which I asked her about whether the gallery's thoughts have yet turned to its anniversary. And if you know Brett won't be at all surprised to hear that she leapt on my question and instantly asked me whether we might hold a preliminary workshop to explore the possibility of some kind of scholarly collaboration to mark the gallery's 50th year. Following me and under the expert guidance of my colleague Sarah Turner, we held a day long event workshop event on Wednesday the 24th of May 2017 it was that long ago, in which some 20 artists and photographers writers and curators gathered together to discuss potential themes for and approaches to the gallery's forthcoming anniversary. And I remember the day well and the lively and generous conversations it generated, provided the seeds from which this larger far larger and more ambitious conference has grown. Even as far back as then it became clear that any scholarly event that our two institutions might organize together should combine a focus on the gallery itself. And it's fascinating and important story with a broader look at photographers many histories manifestations mutations in Britain over the past 50 years. So this basic thought that we at the PMC returned to our conversations with the team at photographer's gallery earlier this year, when we began planning in earnest for this event. Since then, this collaborative project has been run from the PMC side by Sarah Sarah Turner deputy director by Daniel Convy event events assistant, both of whom have received great support from our events manager Sean Blanchfield. We work closely with the amazing team at photographer's gallery, better self of course but together with Claire graphic, Louisa Elliott, and Janice McLaren. I like to thank all of them for all their work and putting together such a rich and appetizing program of talks and lectures, and for attracting such a stellar array of speakers. We're also delighted to announce the involvement of ASAP art ASAP art in this conference series. ASAP art is both an app and a website and was founded by Rahab Alana, who's a curator at the Arkasi Foundation for the Arts will be also be chairing the sixth and final panel of the conference series on the third of December. The app ASAP art features short essays videos images and audio conversations focused on lens based art and media with a particular focus on South Asia. The events organizers have been liaising with Rahab and Sanjuti Mukherjee, the editor and manager of ASAP art to find writers who will be producing reviews of each panel throughout the series. These reviews will then be featured on the app after each event has been broadcast. Today's panels for instance will be reviewed by Sakanya basket and Rowan near. And to say that earlier this week ASAP art recorded a two part podcast featuring an interview with Sarah and with Brett conducted by a rush of apps. This offers a deeper insight into the ideas topics themes and intentions behind this conference. The first installment of this interview will be released later today. So please make sure to watch out for it. I'd just like to thank all the speakers we have many of them and all the chairs have agreed to participate across these three days. We can't wait to hear your thoughts to learn from you and enjoy and to join in the discussion. Thanks so much. I'm now delighted to turn over to Brett herself. Brett over to you. Thanks so much, Mark. And thank you for those very generous remarks. Of course, I think everybody knows who I am I'm the director of the photographer's gallery I've been here since 2006 and it's wonderful that we're able to celebrate our 50th anniversary by doing this collaboration with the Paul Mellon Center. Before we move on to show a male and the first panel. I just wanted to say a few words regarding the collaboration and how we came to the ideas that will be explored today in the panels. The discussion about this conference really began with the workshop in 2017 but developed in earnest earlier this year. At the outside at the outset, the aim of the conference was fairly broad. It was to consider how photography had changed across the sector during the course of the past five decades. The role which key institutions, agencies and public organizations contributed to the development of independent photography in the UK from the 1970s onwards, encompassing a consideration of the emergence of higher education for photography specialist magazines and publishing and of course artists practice during that period to As well though, given the importance of the fact that the gallery is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, we wanted to ensure that in addition to looking back to the wider history of the sector, we looked at its possible futures to Most critically, we all saw this as an opportunity to highlight through the call out to researchers, new areas of research that in addition to looking back, that would enable us to generate debate and discussion about the gaps in research, which may require further investigation over the coming decades. Earlier this year we intensified our discussions with Sarah and her colleagues about the many ways we could approach those broad areas. Before we finally focus down on the themes we will be covering over the next few days and they are the emergence of cultural institutions across the country, the impact of the socio political conditions had on how photography as a sector, and the manner in which the medium responded to those changing conditions, unpacking ideas around the notion of post photography and focus presentations on the work of individual artists such as And it's important to note that we approached the curation of the program by acknowledging the critical importance of looking outside London. Despite the photographers gallery being based in the global city of London, we are an essence and national institution and wanted to represent the histories and conditions of practice beyond our doors. And to remind you of course that today's session is just the first of three, the next of which takes place on December the first. Thank you to Sarah Turner, Shawna Blomford, Danny Convey and the rest of the team at the poor melon center, as well as this morning speakers and to all for being here. Finally, I just wanted to complete my few words of welcome with some housekeeping. The opening session contains five 15 minute papers with a Q&A session after the third and fifth paper. After the first Q&A session, there will be a short 10 minute comfort break. We invite all audience members to type questions using the Q&A function. This session is being recorded and made available to the public. Close captioning is available if you wish to do this click CC button on the bottom right of your screen to enable the captions. Thank you all once again for joining us. We look forward to a rich and entertaining days of talks and seminars. And thank you very much for sharing the first session. Over to Shawna. Thank you Brett for the introduction. And thank you to the organizers for this invitation to chair the first session, especially the teams at the photographers gallery and the poor melon center. And the theme for for this morning is institutions and infrastructures, and we will hear some firsthand insights into the development. We'll hear some firsthand insights into the development of the photography ecosystem in the UK from 1971 until today, looking particularly at the social and political climate which contributed to the development of culture around photography in the UK, right up until today. One thing about bringing such a wide range of people together in in the panel this morning is that we really get to exchange on an intergenerational level, getting to exchange knowledge about the past, understanding better how we got to where we are today, and thinking about the future of where photography in the UK gets to gets to go. So I'm going to start by giving a brief introductions of the biographies of the first three speakers. Their full biographies are available in the program, but I'll do a quick introduction and then we'll, we'll dive straight into the first three speakers, followed by the Q&A, and then the rest of the session. The first three speakers in order in the order in which they will present, starting with Ann McNeil. Ann McNeil has played a role in British photography as a curator editor and writer in a career spanning nearly four decades. She began her career in the dark room at camera work. In 1984 was founding director of photo works in 1995 and artistic director of photo 1998, the UK's year of photography. Since 2000 McNeil has been the director of impressions gallery, a charity that helps people understand the world through photography. Our second speaker is David Bates. David is a photographic artist, historian and professor of photography at the University of Westminster in London. He has published a way of books, including art in 2021, photography as critical practice notes on us in 2020, and photography key concepts in 2019. And the final speaker for this morning session is Tauss Ardimani. Tauss is a PhD candidate in the history of art department of Paris one Pantheon Sabon. She is writing a thesis in the history of photography under the supervision of Professor, Professor, Michelle provost, and has taught the history of 20th century photography there for three years. She is the first recipient of the previous Le Chalet, and as a consequence was based in Oxford at the Mason Francis in 2009 and 2020. And we'll jump straight into the first paper now presented by Anne McNeil. Thank you, Anne. Thank you sure I'll just get up share screen. I think that's that working. Can you see it just yet? Oh, hold on. Can you see it now? No, I can't see it at the moment. If you just go to the share screen button at the bottom. And are you able to go into your PowerPoint? On into my PowerPoint. Would you like me to share it for you? Yes, please. Yeah, it worked well in there. No problem. Wait a minute. I knew this was going to happen. Can you see now? Yes. Eventually. Thank you, everyone. No problem. Morning, everyone. And thanks to Mark, Brett and Shor. So my paper today is institutions, infrastructure, exhibitions, the case of impressions gallery. So I'm Anne McNeil, director of impressions gallery, a national charity based in Bradford that helps people understand the world through photography. Thanks to the Paul Melvin Center and the photographers gallery for the opportunity to present the role impressions has played as one of the irreplaceable spaces in the history of British photography. It's only in the last 15 years or so that some cultural institutions have begun to pay closer attention to photography. This has led to an appreciation of the roles played by photographers, gallery directors, curators, lecturers and educators that make up the institutions and infrastructure within the ecosystem of British photography. This morning's presentation is my personal insight. A firsthand testimony as someone who has direct experience within the photography scene from the early 80s to now. For context, I'm going to take you on a whistle stop tour of my career before I joined impressions gallery in 2000. I began my career in 1984 at Camerawork. Camerawork was a pioneering cultural organisation based in Bessno Green, East London. It was a neighbourhood with a history of radical political struggle. Camerawork published a magazine from 1976 to 1985 and Camerawork had a gallery space with a national touring programme. This is some of the exhibitions, Joe Spence Picture of Health and another exhibition around that time. Again, Joe Spence Phototherapy was collaborating with Rosie Martin, how I do believe is at this conference today. I worked in the dark rooms, providing technical and practical advice and ran community photography projects. It was called Community Photography then. Now it's called Socially Engaged Photography. What you see here is photographs from the girls photography groups based around their house and the girls were aged 10 and 11. I think it's fair to say that Camerawork played a major role in the development of the 70s and 80s radical photographic practice. I also like to think that my two years at Camerawork, I also like to think of my two years of Camerawork as my apprenticeship and that has implored my curatorial approach to photography, especially my interest in debates around identity and representation. In 1993, I was employed at the Cross Channel Photographic Mission. My main purpose was to promote the understanding of photography to new audiences. Based in the southeast of England, the Cross Channel Photographic Mission was a commissioning agency with the aim to record and document the social, cultural, economic and environmental changes brought about by the construction of the Channel Tunnel. Between 1987 and 1994, there were 11 commissions in total. The legacy being a series of inquiring critiques on how we live in the late 80s and 90s. So as you can see from my slides, the approaches in photography quite varied from like black and white social documentary of Dene Mardel through to what you see here, Karen Norr's Aragorical Work. Once the Channel Tunnel opened in May 1994, the geographical and philosophical rationale of CCPM needed to change, and so I set up as the founding director of Photoworks, an independent photography organisation that we know continues to this day. So what you see here is the first piece of Photoworks marketing in 1995. I was the artistic director of Photoworks 98, the UK Year of Photography. This was a year-long programme of commissions, exhibitions, publications and public art based throughout Yorkshire and beyond. There were more than 100 partners including museums, galleries, archives, photo collectives, artists, professional photographers and hobbyists. A pivotal project was continental thrift, the European commissions. And these commissions were born out of the desire to understand our cultural identity, our society and our place in Europe. And what you're looking at is the front cover of the accompanying publication with an image by Joy Gregory from her body of work, memory and skin. I think today photography has an assured place in larger galleries and museums and is accepted as a value of that form, but it wasn't always so. So how did this happen? And I'm going to show you, take you through the case of impressions. In 1972, when young graduates Fal Williams and Andrew Spock set up impressions, it was widely acknowledged that photography was seriously undervalued in Britain. There were few opportunities to exhibit. Photography was largely shunned by major institutions and British photographic heritage was relatively unknown. In June 1972, impressions opened in a corridor above a leather shop in York. The first specialist photography gallery outside of London. It's an orgo exhibition featured the work of Venor Bischoff and established magnum photojournalist. The choice of Bischoff showed that the gallery held high ambitions from the outset, a level that remains to this day. The corridor had limitations and within months the gallery moved to new premises in a former osteopath's office. Among the many photographs, bold press releases, letter set leaflets and personal letters that sit within our archive. There is a handwritten letter from May 1972 from a student studying photography at Manchester Polytechnic. One sentence in it reads, I don't know how you're fixed up for exhibitions. Yours faithfully, Martin Parr. Falons by the Sea opened in November 1972 with the work by two young unknown photographers, Daniel Meddles and Martin Parr. This show was both Meddles and Parr's first exhibition. It kick-started their long careers in photography. This show established impressions, commitment to nurturing, supporting and working with new generations of photographers, one that continues to this day. In 1973, reflecting on the gallery's first year, Williams wrote, the gallery was based on hope, a certain amount of goodwill and overdraft and the conviction that photography must be recognised as an important part of art in everyday life. In 1972, writing and time, memory and myth, published coincide with 30 years of impressions, Williams touched on the useful energy that was around at that time. She wrote, the new gallery directors in the photographers felt like maverick pioneers, disregarded by the art world, but fully aware of the exciting possibilities of photography.  Impressions, the photographers gallery, stills, open eye, photo gallery, street level are all still open and the ones that are sadly closed, est up in Bath, camera work in London, Cambridge Darkroom, Montage and Derby, Gallery Newcastle, Portfolio Gallery, Neck and Burrart, and Portfolio and Leeds. I believe that without these visionary galleries, it's unlikely that British photography would have developed into the successful and influential medium it is today. In the mid 80s and early 90s, as photography came of age, Impressions championed new work by national and international photographers who questioned their work. Under the directorship of Paul Womble, exhibitions explode issues concerning race, sexual politics, gender and class and I'm just going to give you two examples of two exhibitions. In 1990, Impressions commissioned Suno Gupta, who in his own words has spent his career making work, responding to the injustices suffered by gay men across the globe and Tessa Boffin, a visual activist and photographer of this groundbreaking group show, Esthetic Antibodies, Resisting the Age Mythology. And also in 1990 was the exhibition Heritage, Image and History, which was a critique of British class and culture. This group exhibition included sharp observations by social documentary photographer Paul Weiss, whose work is strongly influenced by his working class image on the front cover of the book. And the group exhibition also included Guyanese British photographer Ingrid Pollard's seminar work Pastoral Institute that examined feelings of alienation and otherness experienced by black British people. So the new millennium, I joined Impressions in 2000 and under my directorship the roster of photographers have been diverse united by a common challenge to connect with the wider issues of society. Many photographers we have worked with over the years have acknowledged the positive impact working with the gallery has had on their careers. We promote young talent from diverse backgrounds to make new work, however long that may take and support them to take creative risks. So an example of this is Trish Morrissey, her first and her breakthrough series Seven Years. I began with Morrissey in 2001, supporting her to make new work exploring the language of family albums and the psychological tensions within the resultant series took more than three years to make and not the planned one year. This is an installation shot of the final exhibition in our last venue in York. Both Morrissey and I agreed that this made for a stronger body of work. To cut a long story short in 2005 I was very much engaged in the work of the artist, the artist. I had been gambled and in a bold move close the gallery in York and relocated to Bradford opening in 2007 in a purpose built new home dedicated to photography. Bradford is a post industrial northern city. The fifth most deprived in England with a high proportion of young people and a culturally diverse population. Moving impressions from the affluent tourist city Since opening in summer 2007, Impressions has continued to commission and promote British contemporary photography to the widest range of audiences. As I said at the beginning, Impressions Gallery is a charity that helps people understand the world through photography. We make a distinct contribution to the UK photography scene going beyond our base in Yorkshire through our national touring program and our publications. And there's a sample again on the screen. Two examples of exhibitions that I've curated are in 2011, which is Joy Gregory Lost Languages and Other Voices. Joy Gregory is one of the major artists to come from the Black British photography movement of the 1980s. Lost Languages and Other Voices was the first retrospective of Gregory's work, spanning 25 years and presenting 16 different bodies of work. This exhibition explored themes of gender, race, post-colonial identities and stereotypes. This critically acclaimed retrospective offered the chance for us to gain a greater understanding of Gregory's work. And if we go forward a decade to 2021, in which language do we dream? Again, here's an installation shot. This is our most recent exhibition and in which language do we dream? It's a long-term collaboration between socially engaged photographers Rich Wiles and the Alhadawee family, particularly Ruba the mother. The Alhadawee family are Syrian refugees who have resettled in Yorkshire. And the exhibition looks at displacement, integration and the meaning of foam. We also, Ruba and her children also took their own photographs of documenting their own lives in their own ways and impressions of published and newspaper that is distributed through libraries and schools. So this is the front cover of Front's Pre-Spreads of the newspaper. So just before I conclude my paper, I have a cautionary warning. My cautionary warning is this. The inequality of grants within the public funded arts council sector, given the size of financial awards to contemporary visual arts organisations compared to those who specialise in photography is a worry. Another worry is the level of disparity of funding that goes to London compared to the photo organisations in the regions. Both of these need to be challenged and rectified, I think. So I'm just about to conclude now. And this is me with the Alhadawee family and Rich Wiles family in the gallery in the summer. So my conclusion, the last 50 years have shown that photography is constantly shifting impressions alongside the other independent photography galleries, each with their own distinct personalities of championed photography within the UK. We have all played a crucial role in British photographic culture and we have all played a role in placing the medium firmly on the centre stage of contemporary visual art practice. I believe that impressions galleries as vital today as it was when it first opened. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Anne. Hugely insightful and great to hear about your long and deemed career at major institutions throughout throughout the UK, but many of which are still going, which is fantastic. David, David Bate, you're up next. Yeah, I'm here. I'm just going to show my screen. If I can. Oh, yeah, you can see it, right? Yeah, we can see your screen if you just bring up your presentation. Perfect. Great. Hi, everybody. Happy birthday, 50th birthday to the photographer's gallery. And happy then, you know, congratulations to all of those past and present who've made it survive. It's no mean feat to keep established for so long as Anne was just hinting, I think. OK, just before I talk about 1971 as a by way of preface, I think the title of this conference has come about or draws on the title of the exhibition that it first held the concerns photographer. First question to be asked about the concern photographer for me is concern with what, who and why? So one might argue that it was the very setting up of new photography institutions like the photographers gallery, impressions, camera work in the UK and USA and aperture and later, of course, autograph and many others that enabled the concern of photography to become a social and cultural question in the first place. By opening up a series of new public spaces for the display of photographs, the issue of what is of concern is answered with every exhibition. That is to say, it is the accumulation of exhibitions that add up over time across the networks of independent photography galleries, which enunciates exactly what the concern is with for and of photography in any given period, including today. In other words, it is the exhibitions that function, if you like historically, as a series of statements about what the photographic and institutional communities concerns are. I've chosen one exhibition from 1979 as a focus because it represents a kind of pivotal moment and event in the as yet unwritten critical history of this period of new public spaces for photography culture and practice. If that critical and value value of history of photography galleries has yet to be written, it is nevertheless clear that the 1970s presents an extraordinary openness and ambition for the social and cultural role of photography in the life of Britain, one that should not be forgotten and whose history and issues remains relevant today. So why in 1979? Well, it's a pivotal moment, I think, is not just the end of the decade or because it's when Margaret Thatcher was elected as Prime Minister with the Conservative Governmental Project to Change Britain. Nor is it because 1979 is when the first hip hop record is said to have been recorded, nor even is it because the Photography Subcommittee of the Arts Council of Great Britain, as it was called then before it was regionalised, that the Photography Subcommittee was abolished in 1979. Rather, it's because of this exhibition that the Arts Council of Great Britain had supported and funded the three perspectives of photography. Recent British photography held at the Hayward Gallery in London in the summer of 1979. That the exhibition is located within the Hayward Gallery is itself significant. The Hayward was then a relatively new space, open just a decade before in 1968. And so not part of the old established British art institutions, the Aristocratic Royal Academy of Art, the National Gallery, or even the Victorian-Victorian Albert Museum with its collection of art photography. And you can see from the image of it, this sort of brutalist building is nothing but a stark contrast with the kind of rather nostalgic traditions of all the other buildings that I've just referred to. The three perspectives on photography exhibition was an event that seemed to indicate a new phase of dialogue between the growth of UK-based independent photography practices and institutions and an art institution. In a way, there's still often fraught relationship between photography and art and a variety of concerns or what we might call critical tensions manifest themselves in the exhibition itself. Now, this may seem slightly abstract, but I suggest the critical tensions in and of exhibitions can be summarised and mapped across what the French... Oh, it wasn't my cycle, it's a nice missing... What the French philosopher Jean-Ralzier calls the three regimes of the image. That is the intersecting issues of representation. That is the representative function of images. There are aesthetics, that is the forms and modes of effective value of images on the viewer's body. And ethics, that is how an image relates to any specific community that it refers to. So the three perspectives exhibition is historically striking, not only because it represents the first Arts Council funded exhibition of contemporary photography in an art gallery, the Hayward, which the Arts Council also funded and managed. Some might have seen that as a contradiction, but... And these reasons are all already interesting, but it's also that there's a kind of radical conception in the whole formulation of the exhibition. Three curators working from three perspectives presented three selections of work and whose diversity exceeded the technical metaphor of perspective in its title. Paul Hill, sorry, I've got my hand on this slide. Paul Hill's suction on the use of metaphor, truth and individual expression probably now looks the most traditional perspective. Single authors, six white men, each presenting a set of photographs signature-styled as distinct bodies of work by Thomas Cooper, Brian Griffin, Raymond Moore, Roger Palmer, Martin Parr and Graham Smith. I'm sorry, something came to my slide here. These practices are actually as diverse as the issues they address. Angela Kelly's section on feminism and photography presented work by six women. A remace to this day, the most engaging, exciting and diverse section of photographic practice. Eileen Faraday, Christine Hobbehader, Eve Lomax, Sarah McCarthy, Joe Spence and Valerie Wilmer, whose work focused on British, African, Caribbean music and culture. John Tagg's section from a socialist perspective on photography is equally diverse, made by work by activists, artists, community groups and collectives, which included, as you can see, Victor Bergen, Robert Golden, Hackney, Flasher's Collective, Alexis Hunter and Report IFL, which is two cooperative groups of photographers based in London who concentrated on alternative news reporting events, as you can see, long way before social media. The work included statistical reports and employment accompanied by photographs. Across these three perspectives, different notions of photography can be seen in play. However, we define them as ideas of art, documentary, fictive photography, theatrical photography, activist forms, conceptualist practice or, or communally orientated work. At the time, and in her insight, the exhibition presents, and this is my argument, a radical pluralism for photography. The exhibition attempts, no matter how flawed, clumsy or unformed it may seem to us today, to address the new social and cultural pluralities of expression in photography. Indeed, these differences of expression in practice were themselves, I think, indicators of significant social and cultural shifts in Britain, across Britain, even if the exhibition is in London. These shifts were not because of factorism, which of course did go on to dominate the 1980s, trying to define the governing political narrative of that era, but because of the already ongoing underlying transformations of Britain as an industrial and increasingly post-industrial society. It's changing culture, economy and social structures during the 1960s and 70s, so that in a sense, the diverse concerns of the exhibition, the more or less explicit categories in it of class, race and sex, but also a number of other categories, like homelessness, discrimination, ageism, questions about everyday life, about communal practices and all that go on, are symptomatic of the changing conditions and demographic politics related to different communities in Britain and beyond. So set against the fading general historical narrative of Britain as an imperial and colonial power, the 1970s is also marked by the emergence of marginalised voices and issues from a diverse population. The three perspectives on photography marks the emergence and insist on the importance of the three perspectives, the individual expression, the importance of individual expression, and I don't think we should ever take that for granted, the position of women and specifically feminism and photography, which was at that time clearly informed by a dialogue that was very visually nuanced through the sophisticated debates of the 1970s women's movement. And thirdly socialism, which is really the inherited name, led to the ideals of emancipation and immense of patery movements at that time. So in a historical moment then, 1979, not yet dominated or captured by communal identity politics, these three perspectives with their own internal critical pluralism of concerns demonstrates the fracturing and significant fracturing of any sort of national or nation state narrative of its population, which are here in the exhibition replaced by more local plural narratives underlying the era. I mean, of course, there's a bravizo here in the sense that these issues or topics and themes that could emerge, be shown to emerge through the specific use of photography as a popular, democratically available art form, as it was increasingly becoming precisely through organizations, organizations like camera itself. In this sense, the exhibition itself is also implicitly a critique of the monocultural model of photographic modernism and its documentary equivalent that had prevailed across many photographic discourses and galleries. But it didn't exclude it, and this is what's so interesting about the show, it literally puts it in perspective alongside these other practices. So put simply the three perspectives on photography exhibition and the company events show that photography could be used to speak in many ways about different things in multiple voices and accents as presented in all three sections of the exhibition, and in their own specific ways. Above all, the exhibition was remarkably popular despite the skepticism of arts institutions about photography, not being an art. It outstripped the audience figures for other exhibitions that year. John Tagg, one of the curator's remark that one of its achievements had also been to fight for the provision of a crush since babies or children with parents were not permitted in galleries at that time, so that mothers could attend the exhibition too. I mean, does that seem so hard to imagine a time of such incredible discrimination where women were not allowed into galleries with the babies? It's extraordinary. Yet the exhibition also highlights a number of contradictions that are still relevant today, which overlap with Jean-Paul Sierre's three regimes of the image, representative aesthetic and ethical questions about the practices that the exhibition included. So these three things, this is not to indicate any kind of priority in the order that I do them, but firstly, representative of the question of who and what is represented to and to who and by who. Secondly, what aesthetic relations the works established with the bodies of spectators who saw the work and thirdly, ethics, the relationship of the different exhibition materials to different communities and their identities. We might have different views about these today than in 1979, of course, as obviously there are many things that have changed. Now, I don't have time to develop these arguments in any depth here, but I would say by way of conclusion is two things. One, that prevailing snobbism that still exists about our institutions in relation to photography is paradoxical. Three perspectives imagined that it was possible to turn an art gallery into a plural social space whose cultural function was to set in dialogue different uses of photography with the pluralist conception of its audience. That was a positive event. In one, one might engage through photography with multiple identities that were coming to the surface, so to speak, in the 1970s. And secondly, my final point, why photography? Surely the question which seems so obvious to us does need to be asked here. Why did these social institutions expand during the 1970s? If not everywhere, then at least in certain cities and metropolitan centres primarily. There is surely some kind of relation, a specific dynamic between the different diverse burgeoning photographic practices made by individuals, groups and communities, and the spaces of photography galleries set up to represent them publicly. This would mean that something was emerging that did not currently have any space elsewhere, such as in art museums, libraries or other civic public and private institutions. So I suppose I have to finish with a final perhaps uncomfortable question. What are these spaces today in relation to the diverse practices elsewhere that we still choose to call photography in our new liquid society in which we no longer live in constant certainties as we once imagined we did. Thank you. Thank you, David. Super interesting paper and so great to see those installation shots. Monochrome. Yeah, black and white installation shots from 1979. Fantastic. Our final speaker for this session is Taos Damani. Taos, would you like to share your screen? Yes, give me a second. Can you see it properly? Yes, we've got you. Okay, perfect. Morning everyone. I would actually like to start by thanking Brett Rogers for her invitation today to take part in this conference and Daniel Conway for the Fundament Center for the Organization of the Event. And I would also like to thank Anne and David for the papers and David for his conclusion, which in a way works perfectly well. So this paper is a very trimmed down version of a longer article about the history of autographed ABP. And now guess I'll just jump right in. Since its inception in London in the late 1980s, autographed ABP has sought to elevate the works of photographers from the Caribbean, African and Asian subcontinent diaspora. According to Stuart Hall, patron and advocate of autographed ABP, the aim of the organization, the first association of black photographers was to, I quote, promote and encourage the work of black photographers nationally and internationally, end of quote. This early statement reflects the overall vision of the founding members, namely Solon Gupta, Monica Baker, Mochini Panika Yode, Ahmed Francis, Michael Jess, Lance Watson, and Merle Landon Bosch. But the definition of its purposes and missions evolved greatly over time. The main question of this paper might then be what actions instituted or established ABP. Sorry, I'm just going to, yeah, do that. Add to the institutional critique of the late 1960s and early 1970s, institutional critique as embodied by black British artists and thinkers of the 1980s underwent a central transformation. It was no longer a question of trying to leave the cultural institution, but rather of integrating it with the idea of a cognition in mind and discussing its limits from the inside. Looking back at the 1980s, Covino Mercer wrote on the subject that I quote, the general lesson of black negotiations of institutions lies in the issue of how to work in and against established structures and traditions. End of quote. In this paper, I wish to talk about the little known backstory of a place that is crucial to the history of British and international photography, and to attempt an analysis in three steps of a formalized space of resistance. Sorry, that was Covino Mercer quote, autographed before autographed. The first moment I identified in autographed history actually starts before its official launch. This section is an account of the events that allowed its emergence. This moment is formed around ideas of ideas, sorry, identification of fears, joint action and common projects fostering a sense of belonging and solidarity and showing a strong position to social, political and cultural status quo. Can you actually see the sidebar there? I've just been wondering about that anyway. Indeed, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, black British photographers understood the importance of getting together and self-organizing. Don action was necessary for three main reasons to get black British operators out of isolation, to be able to show or publish their work, and to defend the idea of a kaleidoscopic black Britain and black photography, whatever that might mean. Joint action was exemplified by two groups. The black photographers' collectors launched in 1976 and later D-Max launched in 1985. Between 1987 and 1988, the meeting of key members belonging to both groups and their subsequent reformation into a creative alliance became the core group that would work together to establish the Association of Black Photographers. The black photographers' collective and D-Max created almost 10 years apart, embodied two different generations of operators with very different understandings of the medium, a conflict that would appear and may appear throughout Uruguay's history. On the one hand, the black photographers' collective was founded by Lance Watson and Will Vendon Bosch, following the encounter at the Sir John Cass School of Art in Arlgate, London. Project initiator of the Garvey Rodney Visual Archive, photographer of the Black Liberator and Race Today, and photographer of black people's injuries from police brutality, Lance Watson decided to bring together 12 photographers, mainly through word of mouth, and founded the collective that would meet regularly in his studio and our crew situated between Luckbroke Grove and Portobello Road. Photographers Neon Kenlock, Charlie Phillips and Armit Francis, who all had a strong community-based practice and viewed their photo making as a way to document their community and black British life was part of this group. On the other end, D-Max was founded in 1985, almost 10 years later, and was mainly composed of David A. Bailey, Mark Booth, David Lewis, Gilbert Jones, and Ingrid Pollard, with the impulse and help of Eddie Shembers. During its five years of operation, the group would also include other satellite members, such as Gotts-de-Brown, Wendell Argaard, Susan Moden, and Black O-ray. The members of D-Max were fully aware that joint action was necessary in order to build a network and provide themselves a stronger platform in order to exhibit their work. The question of their place as black British-led space artists within the spaces of white and mainstream galleries would federate the group and occupy most of their conversations. Something they would succeed in doing is by getting D-Max a show at the Photographers' Gallery in the late 1980s alongside the Caravans first exhibition in England. The Photographers' Gallery show allowed Armit Francis and Neon Watson from the Black Photographers' Collective to meet D-Caravans on Stuart Hall's invitation and consequently to meet David A. Bailey, which in turn also led them to meet Tritone on Gupta and Rotini's Vanityo Day, making the Photographers' Gallery a crucial location of the formation of the exhibition. If the two groups did not share the same beliefs as to what the photographic medium could do or the same conception of what photography should or could be, they all shared the then-interpreting project of one day single place dedicated to Black Photographers opened its doors. Almost all of them would meet again at the first national photographic conference where they would obtain the green light to launch the feasibility study necessary for subsequent creation and funding of photograph ADP, imagining a community creating an association. On a 1987 April evening in Monica Baker's hotel room, Black British Photographers, the Black Caucus Group as named by Roshini Kompadou, gathered to discuss the ongoing programme of the first National Photographic Conference organised by the Arts Council in Salford. At this conference, the autonomy of photography was being discussed at the time when the GLC address team abolished. Adding to the financial crisis in the background of the auditorium, the decolonisation of British photography and the recognition of its Black operators were also debated. The discussions were heated even in violence as photographer Joseph Spence recounted in one of the few written reports of this couple of days. The first National Photographic Conference became the site for expressing the anger and being ignored, feeling isolated and wishing for recognition, which respectively, Monica Baker described it to me as I quote their Montgomery March, evoking the US civil rights activism. The objections expressed were finally heard and the list of photographers' demands considered. On this basis, the Arts Council, represented then by Barry Lane, invited them to consider the constitution of a I quote Black photographic body. This invitation marked the first stage of institutionalisation, the state here in the form of the Arts Council and its particular influence exerted its legitimising force. Otagraph's coming of age story is ultimately the convergence of the agency of these photographers and the will of the government agents. With the first £2,000, the photographers started working on creating the associative structure that established a basis for dialogue with their funding body. Soleno Gopter, Monica Baker, Rotini Fane Cliode, Ahmed Fence, Lance Watson and Merz and Walsh formed an initial admin group, having meetings at council offices who supported the photographers in the finalisation of the project. Eventually, the Young Association moved to Brixton, South London, to an office in a building called Montmartre. On the 25th of July, 1998, the association was officially inaugurated at the photographer's gallery, then in Covent Garden, in the presence of the founders, but also Stuart Hall, Fatima Palmer, Linda Bellis and the photographic community. Another pioneering Otagraph member, Roshini Kampedi, would describe the early days of Otagraph as wanting to form a, I quote, an autonomous space, whereas Soleno Gopter recalls the idea of creating this sort of Black co-op. Questions about responsibilities, assignments, duties and tasks would quickly emerge. Gopter remembers that Monica Baker and himself shared the job as coordinators as Rotini Fane Cliode was the first chair. He recalls it being, I quote, a huge learning curve, setting up the back office, filling in funding forms and then listing Black photographers, end of quote. The first two years of the association were based on an annual membership with a five pound fee. They would also produce t-shirts with photographs logo to generate income as financial viability was a central issue for the association and for the photographers. The association worked with the horizontal decision-making system. All members had a voice, but as Soleno Gopter subsequently stated, I quote, expectations got very high, very fast. There were all, there were fallouts and burnout, end of quote. Subsequently, Monica Baker and Soleno Gopter moved away from the central coordination of the association and decided to formalize a directorship position. In 1991, Mark Sealy became the first director and ushered in a new era for the association. From our side of the organization to hybrid institutions, the arrival of Mark Sealy at the head of autograph opened up a second moment in the history of the organization. At the time of his appointment as head of autograph ABP, Mark Sealy was no stranger to the association. He had been a member from September 1989, sorry, and became even more active in 1990, participating in various committees. When Sealy took over the leadership of the association, it had 150 members. While remaining attached to its founding principles, in 1991, the association began a long phase of restructuring. Sealy wrote, and I quote, first and foremost, autograph exists for the members. I want to operate on a grassroot level and build up from that foundation. End of quote. The building up aspect certainly died autograph in the 1990s. The structure needed to evolve, as stated by Roshini Kampadou in 1991. Autograph continues to recognize itself, reorganize itself structurally. We are adapting constantly to best suit the needs of a rapidly developing organization. Reflecting on that time, Sealy remembers that I quote, every year was the last possible year, end of quote. So the best option was to become a cultural organization. If in retrospect, this decision would probably save Autograph's existence. It was also a reflection of the evolution of practices that left documentary star somewhat aside in favor of more fundamental or conceptual photographic practices. The 1990s were years of financial stabilization for the organization on the one hand and the initiation of ambitious new projects on the other. In less than 10 years, Sealy doubled the institution's environment from 30,760 pounds in 1991 to 62,000 pounds in 1998. Today, Sealy sums up this journey as fellow, and I quote, we are asking the state to invest in citizens of diverse cultural backgrounds. We have advocated for the state to take care of cultures with consistency, end of quote. In the interest of time, I'll conclude by mentioning the third moment of Autograph's ABP story. Integrated at the turn of the new millennium, and that needs to be considered as the inscription in the long term of its space as an established counter-power. It's oscillating between an artistic organization in youth form and a dissident institution in live or what sense known called the institutionalization of dissents. In the early 2000s, the association once again changed and became a nonprofit organization to pursue its architectural commissioning project in collaboration with universe. Built on the basis of public-private collaboration, the project was made possible by obtaining a 5.9 million pound from the art council, a 1.1 million pounds from Barclays banks, and specific support of the national Lottery Heritage Fund for the development of its research centre and archive with the Livington Place. Located in Florida, it was designed by David H. Iyer, an architect born in 1966 in Tanzania, who graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1993. Located in a narrow street, the building and imposing five-story house and 1,400 square meters volume with a dark gray facet was inaugurated in October 2007. Again, in order to respect the eluded time, I'll end with the inauguration of the building, you might all know, and with a quote by Stuart Hall, introduced about Otagwa's future. And I quote here, I don't know where Otagwa should go. I don't know where Otagwa is going to go. I think there is a kind of assimilationist mainstream waiting for it. They would be pleased to receive an exotic edge, a little of the other, a taste of the other. The art world loves a taste of the other, a little touch of difference here and there, specifically absorbing it. And I'll end here. Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Taos. Super interesting introduction into one of the key photography organisations in the UK. I'd like to welcome all of the speakers back now as we start the Q&A. And if the audience has questions, now is the time to pop them in the Q&A box at the bottom of the screen. And we'd love to hear from you and get those questions answered by our panel. So that was a really amazing start to the three days of this conference and really giving a broad overview of how photography has developed over the past 50 years and then focusing in on some really specific moments, particularly the founding of Autograph and particularly with you, David, the year 1979. For me, a new insight into that exhibition, so that's really exciting. For those of you who don't know me in the audience, I'm the Director of Photoworks, and this subject of institutions and infrastructure is something that's really close to my heart. I have dedicated my career to working in not-for-profit photography organisations in the UK now as the Director of Photoworks, but previously as one of the first curators of photography at Tate Modern. And we will hear a presentation that talks a little bit about photography at Tate later on today. But I just wanted to start the Q&A this morning by thinking about how the three papers and particularly Anne, what you discussed and Taos, what you discussed, really highlights the self-starting nature of how photography evolved in the UK. And really thinking about these key women, like Sue Davies, who started the Photographers Gallery, and Anne yourself, who started Photoworks, which I'm very grateful that you did. And Taos, this group of individuals that came together to start Autograph. And I wanted to kind of think about how really it was this move towards becoming established about what it meant to be an established organisation and kind of getting recognition for a medium. And I wanted to ask if I wanted to ask a little bit about this idea of the difference between the need for this recognition and establishment of the medium for photographers, but also for audiences and how those two things really kind of were playing off each other in those early years. And you might be able to kick us off with this one. Yeah, I think audiences are important and audiences are really important to everything we do today. So going back to the early 70s, I think Val Williams is another pioneering woman and Andrew Sproxson. I mean, I think I can't speak for them, but I've been around impressions a lot. The audiences are important, people were important. So the audiences weren't like photographers, but it was also the people that came to the gallery. And I think picking up on David's point about if I got this right at the end, you know, why do we have photography spaces? I think that specialism was there from the beginning and it's still needed today because I think photography galleries are social spaces and audiences and people come to them. And all the diverse audiences are important if that answers the question. Yeah, I mean, I think that's really important to talk about, you know, I was thinking, okay, so all of these independent photography organisations started as medium specific spaces. And I wonder whether that was because it was easier to go down that route, to start something relatively small, rather than to try and continue knocking on the door of the big organisations that were not very welcoming to photography at the time. Right, okay, I get the question now. Yes, the big institutions, including the two, weren't at all welcoming to photography. That's why I think a lot of the network did start. I do think there was an appetite for photography, people, it's democratic, so people felt that, you know, it was their medium to use. I think that that's important. I think, as I touched on in my paper, was out the network of independent photography galleries and agencies like and people placed like autograph. I do think our constant presence has been a thorn in the side that has made the visual art world take us seriously. Hence, you know, it took a long time for the Tate to get a specialist photographic curator. And I'm really glad that they do have a photographic department now, but it took a long time. And I do think without that network out there, I don't know where we might have been. Yeah, so it's those incremental steps of establishment and recognition along the way. Taos, did you want to comment on that, on the importance of having a space specifically for black photographers? Yeah, of course. I think what is fascinating in terms of looking back and paper and David's paper is that, especially in England, at least in the 70s, you had at the exact same time, the idea of defending a medium that was overlooked, trying to also define its theory, its history and ways of working with it and mention camera work. But I also like to mention Tenei as also this like, I mean, such an important publication in terms of figuring out what we were talking about at that time in terms of image making. And then so you have this like thing, photography that is marginalized that nobody wants to exhibit, nobody wants to show, nobody wants to publish or anything like that. People that are so enamored with it and trying to create networks and places and publications. And you have another layer of being marginalized within society. So you have black British artists that first and foremost black British citizens that are being refused at that time in the 70s and 80s to be full British citizens. So you have uprisings, you have discussions, you have laws, you have all that, but I'm not going to go into all that. So you have a double layered problem, the problem of the medium and the problem of the identity of the operators, hence the creation of autographs. And I think audiences were immense aspects of the creation of the association. Around the idea of black photography, you also had the idea of who are we talking to. And so in terms of who we want to welcome within the gallery. And I remember one of my conversations with Mark Sealy saying, seeing my dream was to also open this space, but also fill it with black faces. And the idea also of reaching out to other kinds of audiences, not the usual ones. Sorry, I'll stop there. Yeah. Yeah, super interesting. And that kind of idea of audiences leads me on to a point that you made, David, in your talk that the exhibition at the Haywood was actually very well attended. It was the most well attended exhibition in that year. Do you want to speak a little bit about bringing audiences along the journey during that time? Oh, you have to unmute, sorry. I haven't been using Zoom much lately. Thank you. Yeah, of course, audiences are crucial, but they're built in a way I see that as part of the institutional perspective. But what seems to be happening in the 1970s is that photography offers a mode of expression, if you like, for a whole range of people who didn't have any space elsewhere. And for displeasure, this includes me. I was working class kid who started to study in 1980 after working in a garage for five years, right? So I've shown my work in, I've had my work in impressions gallery in camera work, not the photographers gallery, but I've contributed quite a lot there to the education program. But the since in the 1970s, from the exhibition, it's interesting that it's 1979, women are not in the picture.  So as a working class kid, there was nowhere to to to represent anything. I think that sense of how far we have come should not be forgotten about the 1970s. I think there's a kind of amnesia about how important it was that these institutions opened up to give us to a plurality of groups within Britain who were there's no hierarchy of oppression that I would like to institute here. But I think it's kind of uneven development, but there are lots of groups who felt they needed to express whatever it was in through photography. And the galleries have been just fantastic at opening that up. So the audiences are really crucial, but not the first thing I think about historically about why these things have developed. Because you can't have audiences about people making things for those audiences. And there's obviously a kind of dialogue and circularity between all of that. But if you don't have people making things to put in the galleries, and then there's no point in having a gallery, right? So my senses that something is happening pretty much everywhere. It's very uneven in the UK and elsewhere. There is this sudden brain shoots of photography galleries all over the place. I mean, I hope I'm not like making it sound it was like happy days. But there was something happening here, really quite profound, I think, through that. And I just worry that we look back at that period as a kind of like the TV shows that do the 1970s through top of the pops. It's a depressing litany of superficial rubbish. But in fact, the 1970s is an amazing point of transition in Britain with terrible conflicts, terrible inequalities, which of course we still have. But the photography galleries, their institution is really for me symptomatic of something happening, that those other it's not that the art institutions simply didn't see photography, that even if they did, they couldn't do something that you guys have all been doing and allow that sort of cultural expression, but in that way to have a space that's a legitimate public space. Thank you. Thank you. That's really good to have that insight into the relationship between the individuals that are really self motivating and me and initiating these organizations, the artists that need the outlet to show this work and to have this conversation. It's very touchingly introduced by Adam, right? With the little letter by Burton Park, if you're short of exhibitions, hey. Exactly, exactly. Thank you. Can I just start to say something, agreeing with David? I think the networks and the photography galleries that I sort of listed, I think they existed because of the politicalness, you know, the political state at the time. Again, that class thing you mentioned, David, there was a lot of anger out there against where can our work be shown, where our voices being played, you know, and a great example is siding Newcastle and the work that they do. And I think it was coming together. I'm going to say a perfect storm, but it wasn't a perfect storm. It was what was happening out there politically and fighting against statureism and the minor strike in clause 28. So I think there was lots of different layers to it. And again, the institutions didn't really take photography in its old many other forms. Seriously, I would say. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to jump to some questions from the audience now. Thank you for sending these through. I'm going to start with Claire Caroline. This question is for Tauce. I was struck by the Stuart Hall quote that you used to conclude your paper. Could you please offer your own thoughts in response to Hall's comments, Tauce? Thank you, Claire, for the question. Yeah, it is an interesting quote, isn't it? And the entire interview between someone got to answer at Hall is available online, but if you're interested, go and check it out. I've had this conversation with several members of the founding members of Rotograph, and they all have different answers, but I'll give mine. I guess institutions with their own limits have the power of creating history and a continuum in terms of creating legacies and building heritage. So meaning that they don't allow for fashions and trends to dictate a landscape and especially in the last, let's say, three, two or even year, interests and revivals of interests with specific identities or specific operators or art makers are trends, are fashions, and it's the role of institutions, it's the role of the people within the institutions, because an institution is a big word, but they are made as we've seen this morning by people. And that's also why institutions need to be diverse and made by a diversity of people in order to not allow those kinds of conversations or this touch of the other as to it all says it to be a trend of fashion, but to be something that is systematic and structural. I'll stop there. Yeah. Yeah. Super interesting insight. Thank you. David, a question for you from Carla Mitchell. I wonder if David could expand on his final comment about spaces for photography today in our world of shifting certainties. What are your thoughts? Yeah, sorry. It should be shifting uncertainties. I can't see the question. Sure. Yeah, no, I think clearly that I've been talking very specifically about the 1970s and I noticed some people saying about, you know, the minor straight and so forth in their comments, but that's 1980s. I think that exhibition in 1979 represents a kind of end point. Actually, often the end of a decade isn't the ninth year, but it feels like that kind of was in many ways. And so the idea of these very different plural forms of photography, some completely antagonistic to each other in many ways, not new visually but politically and aesthetically, that space, the opening of that space and its introduction into an art gallery, it's kind of interesting that that has happened to photography again since the 1990s when it did become acceptable to mainstream art institutions. The take in a way was quite late to it compared to other institutions in the world. So that in a way says, okay, there's a space here where you can practice, which is mainstream art galleries. And then we haven't even talked about the 21st century in social media, which is what I'm thinking about. But if I was in the same position I was in 1979, I wonder if appealing to a gallery directly would be my main route. And I think this is pretty obvious. We talk about it with students all the time how pre-internet, your entry is a as a creative individual into an institution is to kind of knock on the door. But with social media platforms and the internet it's been much easier to simply produce stuff online. I can give you a whole bunch of examples in photography, but also in music and other sports or all the industries are finding people who are doing stuff online. And then being integrated into a kind of institutional system, whether it's whatever. So I just, I think it's a good question to ask myself, you know, why would I show my work in a particular photography gallery in a particular city? What would be the strategic, if you like ethical question around that? Or should I put it online? And so forth. So kind of back to the question that, you know, Anne and others were raising about audiences. Who is the audience that now being established by photography galleries? And what do we do? What do you do with those audiences that all think about how to develop them when the whole world system of image production is now completely different? Yeah, thanks. That's a question I haven't gone answer. It's more of a condition that we should consider, right? Yeah. And really interesting to keep thinking about actually, you know, particularly people that are working in institutions at the moment. And I know you are. I'm not saying you're not. I'm just, you know, it's not a critique. I'm just saying, airing it since we should be airing it. Yeah, for sure. Okay, we're going to take a question from Peter Ride. And this is to all of the panel. So there is a sub subtext at these presentations about photography organizations in the 70s to the 90s, being in opposition to a disinterested mainstream culture. But it was also operating in a context of the ethos of a very conservative government, which David, you've just addressed that. The photography organizations provided an alternative space for voices to be heard. Do you think in retrospect, this is still important to consider? Or is it being forgotten in favor of a sort of art history approach to history? Can I answer that? Someone is still involved in a in a photography institution. I think we should never lose sight of that. You know, I think what was it you said to some radical pluralism. And I think that's a plus of photography. And I think the photography, I think, I think this might come across as a contradiction, me saying that photography galleries over the years have really shifted and made photography come of age. But I also think photography should and is sometimes seen as the periphery. And I think exciting things happen on the periphery and important things and radical things, when you're not in the center, when you can can become to be perceived as being complacent, whatever that center may be. So I think of the photography independent galleries as on the periphery, like niggling away, and we should always be niggling away. So it's a contradiction, kind of what I said, yes, we're accepted, but I still think we really should be there being a thorn in the sides of the big institutions. Yeah. I'm not sure it's entirely true, Peter, to say that the mainstream was disinterested in the 80s, for example, maybe in the 70s. So that's why for me that show in 79 is so interesting, because it's like the Hayward has a bigger audience than any photography gallery for sure, because it's such a central London institution. Because the mainstream, as you put it, in the 1980s was rapidly absorbing kind of very localized practices, particularly through music. As MTV came online, and you have a kind of greater democracy, I use that word with scarecoats around it, of visual practices. And of course, in the 1970s, also when postmodernism is first announced, in a way, both as a kind of sociological question about changes in society, but also in art in New York, and how photography is suddenly totally eclectic and wild, and the sense that something was beginning to change in the 1980s in our attitudes to images and about who produces them and how they're produced. And the absorption of the language of advertising and, you know, mainstream media, as you call it, into art practices as well. So they're not brick walls, they're kind of porous. And that dialogue itself is in many ways quite interesting how artists have tried to position themselves either in a kind of consensual or dissensual relation to those practices. So I don't think it's that easy to pick that up. The other point you make about is sort of art history. And I think, for me, that's a problem in more recent years, that photography has become written about actually by art historians who think of it as art. And that misses out in the sense the whole tradition we're talking about, which is photography, a space for photography, which is much more plural and thinks about photography in relation to, say, family practices or work group practices of photography or the collectives that you've been talking about, Tess, which offer other practices. And the fact that those tend to be absorbed or some of them are filtered through into art institutions doesn't mean that they don't have a valid place elsewhere. I mean, even for photography galleries, libraries or other civic places that we might consider worthy for discussions about who we are as a community, the national community. Thanks, David. And tell us any final comments from you before we go to a break. Yes. Thank you, Peter, for that question. I don't know anything about the value of history as an art historian. But what I can tell you is that the value of those alternative spaces and those alternative aspects in the 70s and 80s, I think, was turned through history of, or maybe not history, but at least the passage of time in a very monolithic narrative of what was and is British photographic history. And I think the point now with those kind of, I guess, consensus and other kind of endeavors is to also go back to what it was, actually open up the archives, actually look into it, actually look at what was and what existed and maybe create a slightly more complex narrative of what is British photographic history. Fantastic. Thank you, Taos, David and Anne. We're going to go to a short 10 minute break now and then we'll be back with the second half of the session. Thank you, Shoea. Thank you, Shoea. Thank you, David. Thank you, Taos. Thank you. Welcome back, everyone. Welcome back to the second half of the session, part of the first day of concerning photography, photographic networks in Britain, 1971 to the present. We have two speakers who will now present, followed by a Q&A. And in order to keep things timely, I'm going to start with those introductions. And then thank you, everyone, also for putting their questions in the box in the last session. We'll do another Q&A following these presentations. So please do keep those questions coming. Our first speaker now is Andrew Dedney. He is co-director and co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Network Image and professor of educational media at London South Bank University. He has written and lectured widely on new media and museology. His new book, Forget Photography, 2021 is published by Goldsmiths Press. A particular note to this paper is that he chaired the Arts Council's Photography Advisory Panel between 1992 and 1995. And then our second speaker for this session is Dr. Annabella Pollan. Dr. Annabella Pollan is a reader in the history of art and design at the University of Brighton. She has published widely on the history of photography in Britain, including the publication Mass Photography, Collective Histories and Everyday Life, 2015. And photography reframed new visions in contemporary photographic culture, 2018, co-edited with Ben Verbridge. She has two new books forthcoming, Nudism in a Cold Climate, a study of British nude photography 1920 to 1970s, and Art Without Frontiers, a commissioned history of the British Council's art collection and its use of international cultural relations since 1935. So we will start by handing over to you, Andrew, and thank you so much for presenting this morning. Okay, thank you. Well, hello, everyone. I'm very pleased to be here. I'd like to thank the organisers for including me in the conference. I'd like to thank David, Taouf, and Ann for a really interesting morning that has really deeply immersed me in photography and the period that is covered by my paper as well. I haven't got any slides, so you'll have to just bear with me and I am going to read my paper pretty straightforwardly. So thanks. Okay, well, this talk arises from a recently published monograph, Forget Photography, which is published by Goldsmiths Press this year. I should also add that further discussion of some of the ideas and themes of Forget Photography can be found on the Photo Museum Winters blog still searching. In Forget Photography, I advance the view that in computational image culture, photography has not simply died another death, but has the status of a zombie or the undead. This condition creates a central paradox between what is still understood as contemporary photography on the one hand and the historical passing and memory on the other. Now, comical and popular as the zombie metaphor might be, it serves the purpose of forcing a break with conventional thinking about the continuity of photography in a digital form and thus invites us to look at photograph histories in a different light. Forgetting photography is an invitation from the speculative position of a future present to approach the cultural historical form of European and US photography as a relic, a ruined territory, a medium made obsolete by its computational simulation. It is important to stress, as I do at greater length in Forget Photography, that the aim is not to erase photography from memory, far from it, but rather to remember it differently. The question as it always is with history is how to understand the present as the outcome of the past, or more radically how the present might be different if events had taken another course or even in Foucaultian thinking how the present shapes the discourse of the past. All three of these scenarios play out in Forgetting Photography. Over the last three decades of the 20th century, in differing ways, British documentary, photojournalism, and editorial photography took part in a historic social tragedy instigated by a global realignment of capital and labour. In Britain, the abject social displacement that followed deindustrialisation had its counterpart in photography, as selectively shown in David Meller's valuable exhibition and book No Such Thing as Society, which he did in 2007. Photography over that period enacted two possible responses to radical social displacement, either to join the resistance or to mourn the inevitable loss. Displacement entailed. Both of these paths, as it turned out, amounted to the same thing. But at the time, British independent photography took both roads by constructing personal and mythic representational images of resistance and loss. Such imagery and narratives were articulated locally, regionally and nationally, and continue to dominate British cultural imaginary. Photographing Britishness is part of a longer historical process, which pulled Gilroy in sightfully termed post-colonial melancholia. The global economic and technological forces that in Britain of the 1980s led to the closure of coal mines, steelworks, textile factories and car plants, throwing millions out of work, also radically and irrevocably changed the medium of photography. By the end of the period in which British photography had gained full and international status as art, photography had itself ended. Thus, a double sense of mourning was enacted, not only for the passing of post-war social democracy and its relative industrial stability under capitalism, but also for photography. In the same manner as heavy industry left the country by the end of this period, the image had left the photographic frame and gone elsewhere. But where, as the computational or technical revolution took hold, was anything called photography to go? The answer suggested here, the first part of which has been explored by others, is that a selective version of photography was fully and finally assimilated into British art institutions. But with my addition, that it did so at the point at which photography as the mode of image production had ceased. This selective passage of photography into the art museum involved the purification of photography's hybrid participation in the world, a stripping out of the social relations and networks of the conditions of photography's production, in order that the image could be regarded in the same terms as any work of art in aesthetic modernism. In the polemic of forgetting photography, aestheticization is one manifestation of the photographic zombie. In the example used here, I draw a frame around the Arts Council and British Council's involvement in supporting photography and Tate's acquisition and exhibition of photography from 1979 and up until the opening of Tate Modern at the millennial moment and the year photographer Wolfgang Tillman won the Turner Prize. Not that these elements neatly begin and end with the political boundary of thatcher's 17 years in government as a conservative leader and prime minister and its ending with Tony Blair's election victory for labor in 1997. The historical period could be redrawn earlier with the establishment of the photographic subcommittee of the arts panel of the Arts Council and could be extended to the launch of the Apple's iPhone. The question I'm posing is, should we define the historical events that took place under the banner of independent photography in relationship to a mainstream canon of photography? Or might it be a banner for a different kind of cultural practice altogether? An alternative might be to draw lines of connection and continuity across cultural politics, in which elements of independent photographic practice of the 70s and 80s could connect with early practitioners of critical media network practices, the hacktivists, for example. Anyway, in a highly compressed time scale, Britain de-industrialized, resulting in dramatic and tragic social dislocation. Politically, the ending of Britain's industrial economy and its realignment in a global deregulated mode of new technological production was overseen and orchestrated by an unbending right-wing anti-democratic conservative government known popularly by its leader's name as Thatcherism. This is the bare bones of the matter. Perhaps a British Labour Party in power over the crucial period would have ameliorated the economic transition through maintaining and adapting the welfare state, inaugurating regional developments in collaboration with local authorities and trade unions. Certainly ideas about regeneration based on sustainability, the transitioning of labour force skills, establishing workers cooperatives were all in evidence at the time. Against the progressive possibilities of civic and public reconstruction, the financial markets, investors, employers and business leaders, together with the right-wing press as expected, backed short-term profit on investment and went with Thatcher and her 43 seats electoral majority. I should add that all my life, you know, why working people vote for their own destruction continues to defeat me. Thatcher set about dismantling the public sector, enacting anti-union legislation, the deployment of US nuclear missiles on British soil, the privatisation of public utilities, selling the public housing stock, establishing a backward looking national curriculum while supporting educational segregation through selection. Thatcher's government set the British state on a path of supporting Reagan's Cold War, a war with Argentina, war with the British trade union movement and war with the Catholic majority in Ireland, putting it bluntly, conservative British government under Margaret Thatcher used the state to reinforce patriarchy, stoke white suprematism and demonise sexual and gender difference. That's probably enough said. It was as part of this historical conjuncture of globalisation and a reactionary state that independent photography emerged. The term remains something of a puzzle, encompassing the use of photography by fine art trained practitioners coming out of British art schools, industrially and commercially trained photographers as well as self-taught photographers. Barry Lane, the first and only photographer officer at the Arts Council of Great Britain between 1969 and 1993, and Brett Rogers who worked at the Arts Department at the British Council between 1982 and 2005 as deputy director and head of exhibitions, promoted British photography and were responsible for recommending works to be collected through their respective organisations. I think these two people, Brett, I know you were here this morning probably single-handedly put photography on the map of certainly public funding in Britain. Barry Lane built up the considerable influence within the visual arts and the Arts Council with increased annual budget to support independent photographers, award grants to independent photography in galleries. Brett Rogers was similarly drawing in a stable of independent photographers to represent Britain abroad. Brett became director of the Photographers Gallery in 2006, I think you said. Barry Lane left the Arts Council in 1993 as a consequence of the Arts Council's decision to dissolve the photography committee, dissolve its budget into the visual arts panel on the very argument that there was no longer any distinction between photography and art, and I was at that meeting when that very discussion took place. Much of what could still claim to be the independent photography of the period is not included in the Arts Council nor British Council collections, particularly that which enlisted in active resistance of communities to the state. The work of photographers in the left picture agency, I think report was mentioned, but also network and the feminist agency format which were supplying the left feminist and progressive press daily with images of the resistance of communities and workers remain outside the cannon. Much of the photography produced by community groups such as camera work, which Anne's talked about and black fries in London or art in action in Liverpool and many others also come under the heading of independent photography, but have not found its way into the selective cannon either. Neither the extensive projects of Joe Spence and her collaboration with Rosie Martin on phototherapy have been taken up in any major way. Their work was until Joe's death exhibited in makeshift laminated touring exhibitions distributed by camera work and cockpit. There were many other practices and practitioners of independent photography, for example the work of Peter Kennard for the CND movement. Independent photography of the period is better thought of as a network of progressive image making practices in photography, print, film drawing and drawing upon the inspiration of John Hartfield or the revolutionary social agit prop, which included touring and temporary exhibitions, publications, journals, posters, flyers and banners. This radical heart of independent photography created an educational network of workshops, public access dark rooms, community and schools, photography projects, local history projects, local and national conferences. This little known history of British independent photography is an important piece of the puzzle of Tate's resistance to photography between the 1970s up until the appointments of its first photography curator. Tate's resistance was not only about the ambivalent status of photography in relationship to art but also to the social dislocation and strength independent photography was depicting outside of the art museum. The radical edge of independent photography was revealing an image of the British state's war on the working class. Thatcher termed the miners the enemy within as well as naming Marxist teachers as the enemy of education. Such an image of public strife made the British art establishment uncomfortable. They were after all bound to be concerned about their own patronage and patrons. The belated admittance of photography by Tate came too late for photography as a contemporary medium and in subsequent exhibition and display practice it was photographers after life that had been admitted rather than the default image of visual representation. The commitment and desire of Tate to be at the center of global visual culture in which photography was now accepted as a contemporary art medium was flawed by the deeper undoing of the singular temporal logic of the contemporary and by the new conditions of reproduction in which the temporality of the image no longer denoted a singular presence. Tate had admitted not photography as a medium of the present but a medium of the archival past in which photography now belonged to a commodified heritage culture. Tate had not for the first time played a safe conservative curatorial hand by admitting not the new mode of the image but its deceased analog predecessor. More bizarrely in the moment of admitting photography Tate unwittingly set up a new exclusion zone in order to keep the new ubiquitous profane hybrid image and its pro-sumer audience out of the museum and in doing so maintained its purifying mode. This can be expressed as the art museum's fear of the internet. Thank you. Thank you Andrew. Super interesting and I look forward to discussing that with you in the Q&A. Annabella I'll pass over to you now. We've got your slides up now. Can you hear me and see me and see my slides? Yes do you want to just make it full screen? Yes. Can you see it now and hear me okay? Perfect. Great thank you very much for selecting me to be one of the speakers today. Thank you to the organizers and thank you to the previous speakers. My presentation is of course in dialogue with those presentations that have come before so I'm talking about exploring our weaknesses on the international stage question mark British Council photography and self critique and it picks up rather neatly from Andrew's previous presentation. So as the UK's principal organisation for international cultural relations the British Council established 1934 undertakes cultural activities in over 100 countries including travelling exhibitions of British art and the development and care of a national art collection now numbering nearly 9000 works to populate those displays. Overseen by a selection committee that has boasted some of the most esteemed names of British art history its collections and exhibitions have been an enduring part of the British Council's cultural toolkit. The organisation currently receives around 15% of its funding from foreign and common wealth and overseas development agency budgets alongside commercial sponsorship and earned income but it operates on a cherished principle of editorial freedom. Art exhibited by the council can challenge as well as complement parliamentary agendas. So as part of a larger project where I've been writing a history of the British Council's visual arts endeavour since 1935 my talk today outlines how photography in the 70s up to the early 90s tested that council principle of arms length independence and I'll start by looking at expanded forms and political critique photography as conceptual art in the 1970s British Council. So until the 1970s the British Council collection as it's now known was then mostly comprised of easel painting sculpture and prints. In recognition of the shifting forms of conceptual art in the 1970s photography began to be acquired and displayed. The council's 1976 exhibition Arte Inglese Oggi 1960 to 1976 at Milan's Palazzo Riale for example was populated by 50 mostly young contemporary artists and included what the council's fine art committee member Richard Cork described as alternative developments and these included Keith Arnatt's Liverpool beach burial for example which depicted a hundred people buried up to the neck in sand at four feet intervals as a riff on how situations can create and constitute sculptures and also the expanded forms of Gilbert and George. I'm showing you here their magazine sculpture from the British Council collection but Arte Inglese Oggi was also the site where the council toured performance art by Coom, Genesis P. Oridge and Cosy Fanny Tutti and while their public beletic performance was well received by Italian viewers in the same year Coom came under criticism for having received British state support for their ICA show prostitution. This was intended as a critique of artists commodification and this included materials related to Cosy and P. Oridge's body mortifications including blood and meat cleavers combined with photographs produced while Cosy was working as a pornographic model. As a result Arte Inglese Oggi came under intense scrutiny leading to scandalised headlines describing state aid for example for Cosy travelling sex group and British council attacked for porn subsidy. Conservative MP Nicholas Fairburn declared now we are getting the lid off the maggot factory here at the expense of the taxpayer the British council sends these furious and bogus artists around Europe to destroy the values of western civilisation. The clash precipitated a series of urgent meetings between British council senior executives and its fine art department questioning the value of using experimental art as a national ambassador highlighting serious cultural and generational clashes perhaps best embodied into photographs here the British council executive board from 1975 and to here the 1976 Milan delegation illustrating the different worlds of the mature besuited executives on the one hand and the young disheveled artists in flares and fur coats carrying babies smoking fags and flicking beads. Michael Compton take curator representing the fine arts committee to the British council executive successfully argued that its objective was to give a picture of life aboard in Britain he said this means we should not be afraid of art forms which contain a polemical element if they are representative of the current climate but the issue was to amize again shortly after when in satin artongue selection d'artiste britannique 1970 to 1979 was shown at musée d'art moderne de la ville de paris in 1979. On the opening night St Nicholas Henderson British ambassador was shocked to meet artist Kevin Atherton in the middle of a naked performance piece. Henderson was embarrassed by the work of Atherton but he was enraged by the work of Conrad Atkinson whose extended photographic documents of political murals on Ulster streets captured the conflict's visual culture but came accompanied by unflinching critiques of British government policy in northern Ireland which Atkinson said did nothing about the violence carried out at its command. Henderson took the British council to task for supporting this show saying these exhibits may qualify as interesting social and political statements he said but I do not see by what conceivable criterion they can be called art. Gerald Forty then head of fine arts at British council responded that political engagement was dominant in British art and the department's role was to represent what was contemporary and he argued too in a cultural relations context that Britain's liberal reputation depended on free artistic expression and this was a principle supported by John Llewellyn then the British council's director general who stated in 1979 quote one of the aims of British foreign policy is to uphold and extend the basic values and freedoms of our democracy there is a virtue he said in giving those living under repressive regimes some glimpse of what it feels to live like to live in a society where you do not have to watch your every word. Moving into the 1980s into photography more specifically spending reviews brought in by the new conservative government from 1979 required all publicly funded bodies to shoulder income reduction swinging cuts at the start of the 1980s amounted to nearly 25 percent of British council cultural budgets. Fine arts purchasing budgets had always been very small meaning they could often only buy works by artists at the beginning of their careers and with ever narrowing funds they took advantage of shifting attitudes to photography to develop the collection. Within the British council more broadly photographic exhibitions separate from fine art had been a staple institutional form since the 1940s but these displays typically provided didactic instruction about life in Britain so by the 70s what the council was classifying as photographic and documentary exhibitions included some 45 displays for 32 countries while these could depict for example new approaches to science teaching subjects that did not encroach on art territories exhibitions of documentary photographers such as Martin Parr and Ian Berry blurred these boundaries and this intensified as fine arts began to develop exhibitions focusing on photography as part of their expanded art repertoire this included the exhibition photography as a medium in 1980 a circulating exhibition traveling internationally that showcased conceptual work from Tim Head alongside practitioners of landscape photography such as Faye Godwin and the playful colour studies of Sharon Kivelland. Wider institutional restructures in the council and beyond in the 1980s provided an opportunity for fine arts to explore photography at a time when the medium status was undergoing revision more broadly. Alan Bowness chairman of the British council's fine arts advisory committee and also director of the Tate Gallery and Keith Arnott one of the first artists to be given a British council solo photographic show were at the very heart of these debates. Arnott famously challenged bonus on why the Tate collected only photographs made by artists and not photographs made by photographers Arnott stated quote making a distinction between or opposing artists and photographers is like making a distinction between or opposing sausages and food. So in 1982 fine arts in the British council formally reviewed their approaches to the medium appointing a young Australian Brett Rogers to develop a formal photographic strategy. Rogers had studied in London but had received several fine arts organised travelling exhibition exhibitions while working as a gallery director in Sydney so she had seen international operations from the council from both sides of the desk. Rogers began with a series of judicious purchases for the collection and she went on to create around 30 international circulating exhibitions before 2015 when she led when she left to lead the photographers gallery. So the adoption of photography by the British council was partly practical it was relatively cheap and it travelled well especially as copy prints that could be adaptable to display in a range of conditions worldwide inside and outside the gallery system and sometimes on tour for many many years at a time. From the outset however Rogers photography purchases and exhibitions were imaginative and developed a substantial new strand for the collection reflecting the principal preoccupations of creative practice and the latter included as illustrated here bodies of work that presented a non-heroic view of the nation and also those that appraised the post-industrial political climate exhibitions such as inscription and inventions British photography in the 1980s and documentary dilemmas aspects of documentary practice in Britain 1983 to 1993 examined British domestic realities and the war edges of social inequalities for example Julian Germain's photographs of the shifting fortunes of concept County Durham the location of a major steelworks disbanded in 1980s showed the intimate experience of tough times concert bus station built with Italian steel offers a layered view of smashed glass raindrops and empty buses framed by the mournful message that industry has gone elsewhere. So these exhibitions served as council mouthpieces as they travelled across the globe documentary dilemmas towards 16 countries across Eastern and Western Europe and South America a British council report on documentary dilemmas shown in Sao Paulo described its contents a life-sized cardboard cutout of Margaret Thatcher spattered with red paint a lone caravan parked on a deserted British beach in front of the rusting hulk of an abandoned trawler a union jack caught in a solitary tree in a field in Northern Ireland and a scrum of pink holiday makers in a sleazy seaside hot dog joint outside of Liverpool. So given this subject matter at the opening of the exhibition a British expat confronted an organiser saying they're not exactly promotional are they can't the British council show something a bit more attractive they wanted to know while there were no scenic views of the lake district confusing the purposes of the council with those of the English tourist board 300 Brazilian visitors to the exhibition however were canvassed for their opinions and they said they were appreciative of the truth that was being told. So some conclusions then photography in the British council's exhibitions and collections from the 1970s was entangled in wider debates about what art was meant to achieve in state-funded cultural relations. A major review of arts in the British council led by cultural critic Richard Hoggart was commissioned in the mid 1980s and Hoggart noted that art may resist as well as mirror social values and that this was to its credit. Some council literature he complained speaks of art as though it was the cleanly scrubbed best face of British society a face which exhibits all that is positive and instantaneously cheering in the nation's life but he said the arts may be doing their best work for us and for the understanding of us by others when they are exploring our weaknesses and this self-critique applies well to British photography of the 1970s and 80s and it was this kind of material that Hoggart was arguing that could serve the council well. He said quote overseas audiences will be duly enlightened and will no doubt admire our capacity for honest self-criticism and perceptive insights into our own failings. In fact the director general at this time felt similar he said cultural relations seek mutual understanding they encourage activities which are fully representative of society and culture and not just those that are safe undisturbing traditional and self-flattering end quote. Photography in the British council in the 1970s and 1980s could be variously unflinching and fond but it always drew attention to flaws and this was its power. Photographs after all for all their reality effects are more than a straight messaging system they can clarify but they can also complicate. In the context of British council travelling exhibitions always enmeshed in the renegotiation of national identity and of official discourse photographs uncertainties made them miski ambassadors but potentially profound sites for engagement. Thank you. Thank you Annabella fantastic lots to discuss there and Andrew I'd like to invite you back as well to begin the Q&A and for the audience if you have any questions about either of those talks or the topics in general please pop them in the Q&A box and we'll get on to them in a moment. First of all I think Andrew are you there if you want to turn your camera on please. Okay fantastic welcome welcome back. I wanted to start by I think addressing the presence of Tate in both of your papers very interesting and particularly interesting because it's related to my background as a curator so I was one of the first curators at Tate Modern photography curators at Tate Modern and alongside Simon Baker I wrote the first 10-year strategy for collecting photography that was around 2010 2011 so he was of course appointed as the first photography curator in 2009 and so from my perspective looking back at that time it's really interesting to see how Tate and particularly the opening of Tate Modern influenced the photography sector more widely in the lead up to that in the 90s and 2000s and also I should say Annabella that whenever when I was at Tate and I used to talk about starting the collection and what we were trying to do I would start by using that quote of Keith Arnett and quoting the his text sausages and food which is an amazing text everyone should go and read that it was published in camera work in 1979 I think so Andrea did you want to start I just wanted to ask you to explain a little bit more about why you used Tate as one of the kind of one of your three pillars of significance in the lead up to where we are now. Yes I think it's important in a sense by its absence and also by a kind of suppressed aspect of the understanding of photography as a medium of which Keith Arnett puts his finger on at the time you know photography in the 60s and 70s in British art schools you know had a very confused status it was a it was seen as a tool or a medium that anybody could use you know any art students could use but photography outside the art school photography in the world was not seen as art so you have this kind of dichotomy of the medium in which it was a popular medium ever since Kodak whilst on the other hand it was regarded as simply a tool like a paintbrush that an artist could or couldn't use and I think that dichotomy existed in the arts council's panel visual arts panel right the way through to the point at which Marjorie Orthop Guyton decided to dissolve the quite by that time considerable budget that Barry Lane had built up for independent photography you know under the claim that now of course there was no distinction between art and photography and of course I won't go on but there are many reasons for that of course you know photography you know became a commodity on the art market over that period if you then think about Tate and its acquisition you know Tate tends to follow rather than lead I think even though it's self-image it doesn't quite accord with that thank you of course I don't work for Tate anymore so I can no longer speak on behalf of the institution but I can say that I found your paper particularly interesting because when Simon and I were setting out that first strategy for collecting photography it really was an exercise of looking back at the 20th century and trying to build a collection in retrospective in retrospect so that's actually I think you nailed that on the head in your paper yeah can I say that the you know Tate did exactly the same with Black British art too you know it had to backfill the collection because during the 70s and 80s it studiously ignored it yes thank you Annabella what about your take on that and particularly I was delighted to see your inclusion of Keith Arna in that presentation yeah well the interesting thing I think about the British Council is that it's not so its activities are not very well known in this country despite being this supreme arts organization cultural organization the arts exhibition program in its history is absolutely phenomenal you know often 40 exhibitions a year circulating around over 100 countries and sometimes traveling for years and years at a time but of course the British Council collection is used to serve the interests of international cultural exchange it's very rarely used to furnish exhibitions in this country and exhibitions until very recently organized by the British Council were not seen in this country so it's in some ways kind of gone a bit under the radar but the important thing about British Council in terms of fine arts is its amazing fine arts advisory committee so the minutes of those advisory committee notes are all available for consultation through the National Archive and they show this extraordinarily well-networked set of debates that's happening between the British Council and the leaders of all the main cultural institutions so you know the the director of the Tate the head of the National Gallery they're all part of this consultation about what should be bought what should be sent so there is a really interesting and very well-networked dialogue going on there so I think it's important to sort of not mischaracterize them as working in any way in opposition or in isolation but one of the interesting things that Andrew's brought up was about black British art and I didn't touch on this or black British photography in relation to what I was saying in my presentation but it's a big part of the larger book that I've written on the subject and in 1979 you know in the in the same year that the British Council appeared to be breaking new grounds by sending these interesting young artists and you know new expanded including photographic forms overseas and a certain art on clay they didn't send a single black black artist at all and David Medalla and Rashid Arain you know mounted a critique which for a long time you know remained a sort of standing critique and there has been a lot of backfilling in more recent years to address gaps in the collection so while they're well-networked they're well-networked within a certain body of institutions they're not necessarily well-networked with some of those grassroots organisations but Brett is here and the impertinence of me talking about the development of the photographic collection when the very person who developed is here I really hope that she'll be able to reflect. Well thank you Annabella I just want to say thank you for all the research you've done because I agree that it's been under the radar and it deserves a really thorough accounting of the politics and the drivers behind the collection and the reception to the work abroad. I'd just like to say two things I know that you didn't mean to say that I stepped down in 2015 I stepped down in 2005 and the other thing was that my advisors on the I always had had an advisor who sat on that grand committee so I started with an independent person because I didn't really want an institutional person who I thought would give me an independent point of view and he did and that was the critic and writer Ian Jeffrey and he was on the on the that fine arts committee for the first five years then we changed to Colin Ford because I think he'd taken over at Bradford and Bradford suddenly became extremely important we felt we should involve him in some of our decision-making I think after that we we did use some other more freelance people and didn't go so much to institutional voices and we and perhaps at that stage too we did we weren't using relying so much on advisors within the panel. I think you're right that since 2005 they have had to make up a lot of the gaps in the collection. Documentary donimus as you know did include work of Ingrid Pollard and Julian Jermaine so and we did encourage have have an exhibition too about Asian photographers in Britain well I can't remember common ground remember we did focus begin to focus on that in the in the late 90s so we were beginning to address those images those those issues in all the exhibitions towards the 90s but certainly not as much as we should have as you say we had a limited budget and everything we did with the circulating exhibitions immediately became part of the collection I thought that was always a very sensible thing so we just weren't buying things randomly they had to suit the context of the exhibition we were curating and then of course I didn't curate all the shows myself I was very fortunate to work with Val Williams uh with Kate Bush on co-curating exhibitions and towards the end of my time there as we became far more aware that we were no longer able to curate shows for countries abroad and needed to involve their voices in the selection we passed over the curation to curators in Latin America, Africa, Iran to to curate the shows themselves with our with our direction and guidance so it did there is still such a fascinating history to be written and thank you for making a start on it I do hope it will continue but Andrew I take on board a lot of the things you've said about the canon etc but in a way I think that I would already felt that I was pushing pushing pushing things nearly as far as I could with doing some of the more controversial work and and of course as Annabel reply I had has demonstrated I had so many ambassadors right directly to me saying could you not please I don't want you to ever send a show like that to Poland or Sao Paulo again just send me some nice landscape photos next time so we had to remind them always that we if you would like that you just go to London the British tourist board we're here to talk about the criticality of the medium and and I'm afraid if you have a British council show it will involve that aspect of the work so it was always a bit of a struggle in any event and of course it could have been broader and more representative I take that on thank you Brett thanks for the insight and we have a few questions coming in from the audience first of all a clarification from Ian Walker and this is a note on sausages and food we seem to have some confusion of there's a few comments in the chat section about it as well as where it was first published so Ian says sausages and food was first published by photo view published by photo gallery card if I imagine then reprinted in creative camera he mentions that creative camera hasn't been mentioned so far its relationship with 810 and camera work is worth exploring and I think what this mornings and afternoon session has really brought up is that there's so much more to be researched we need to get into the archives of these organizations or into kind of the paperwork to to try and find out a little bit more about all of this I'm going to take some questions now so this is from Trev are we in danger of concentrating on photographers as photo as docu commentators or conceptual artists and ignoring those who explored photography in its own language Andrew I'm not sure Andrew Annabella would either of you like to take that one I just narrowly focused on that theme of critique and you know the political funding and the debates about arms length editorial independence not because that's the only interesting thing to say but just because I only had 15 minutes and I thought that would provide a kind of neat case study but actually I think in photographic collections of the British Council for example it as Brett can attest there's a whole range of different kinds of photographs being collected I focused in that presentation on two aspects the conceptual photographer and the documentary photographer but that is not all that was being collected there's a much more diverse and eclectic range of material covered um Andrew I could butt it back to you perhaps because um you know how one collects in a sort of art collection context social media photographs and the networked image is you know a big question and I don't have the answer to that yeah no exactly well um what I would say um is of course that you know one of the aspects of what I was saying is that we were not only seeing photography as a medium used to mourn the passing you know of a particular post-war social democracy but we were also seeing photography mourn itself so to that extent you know these last three decades you know the medium of photography has been radically changed by the internet and hence the networked image so we can't carry on talking about photography as if it's somehow the same thing as it was in the 70s or the 80s you know photography um and I'm of course in my book forget photography I say we can't even talk about it as post-photography you know post-photography attempts to kind of stitch the entire history of photography from you know laycock uh right through to um you know your iPhone as if it's all one medium whereas I'm kind of arguing that it's not one medium and really one of the ways in which the history of this period uh what it needs to do is actually look at the the um the way in which photography particularly I think Martin Parr you know was actually um both mourning uh you know a certain kind of mythic idea of Britishness but in but in it equally I think Martin you know was um involved in the commodification of the medium of photography he says this himself you know um you know with the new color photography he was he saw the medium you know uh basically as a medium from advertising and of course advertising you know is part and parcel of the kind of change of the nature of photography yeah so you know we can't keep talking about photography as if it's photography thank you Andrew very interesting answers to those questions um there's just a comment from uh Peter Ride and it is important to mention so as part of this conversation we should mention the collection of the V&A of course they've been collecting for 150 years or over 150 years um and the National Museum of Photography Film and TV in Bradford um so there are of course other national collections other than the Tate that were focusing on photography for a long time um and indeed the collecting strategy at Tate Modern in particular was in dialogue with those other national collections um the next question I'll go to is from Carla Mitchell um many thanks Andrew for the for your prerogative talk and description of the incorporation of the 70s and 80s photography as artworks I wonder how you think this relates to the recent reemergence of socially engaged photography since 2008 and are you suggesting the potential of in of new networks of progressive image making online practices well um yeah well first of all um I'd just like to say Brett that I think that you have always been a subversive um you're a subversive civil servant you know it's a kind of hard trick to pull off but I think you've done that and the um Carla what I'd say is that um when Brett um set up the digital program at the photographers gallery and employed Katrina sluice as the first um curator of the digital program that I think was a very again a subversive and kind of progressive moment for the institution because it seems to me you know that if photography is not photography then quite clearly you know the new practices of image making just because photography isn't photography doesn't mean to say images aren't still everywhere and that they're not still powerful of course images are hugely powerful so I think in a way the exploration of where the where the image is gone you know is very well represented by the um photographers galleries digital program and weirdly COVID of course is has shoved us all we're all in this look at look where we are today we're all in this virtual space we're all in these images so I think that Carla is my kind of answer to where we should be thank you and and about I think we have to lose you now unfortunately but thank you so much for your time thank you for having me I have to go and teach thank you so much Eneva thank you thanks all oh I'd like to welcome the other speakers from the previous session to come back on for the final um final few minutes of discussion there's a few more questions left um there's actually a very a very big question um from uh oh we've got lots of questions coming through now but I'll ask this one first um so can I ask as the as arts council staff member ace has continued to invest in photography in the arts council collection venues artists and projects since Barry's extraordinary work how further should ace develop photography um that's a very big question um well first of all I'd I'd like to thank Taos for putting up that picture of Barry Lane um I think it was which of course I think came from his um the picture that was used in his obituary uh Barry was an and he was again like Brett he was a um a subversive civil servant um and did a huge absolute huge amount you know the one thing I would say about Barry is that um you know he he didn't have a heritage view of of photography he actually did respond to photography as a changing kind of medium uh and I think that um you know the arts council has made attempts to deal with cross art mediums um you know it's tried to respond to the fact that mediums don't stay in their place anymore you know film isn't film photography isn't photography uh so the answer is the arts council should continue to support you know kind of hyper media and look for where those practices are but one of the things that the arts council um uh nortate really do is actually explore the uh cultures of the internet I mean I ended my talk by saying look there's still a fear of the internet the internet is still the other you know to the to the art museum thank you and would you like to have a response to that I knew you were going to ask me that past I also want to say um I mean I started my career but when Barry Lane was the arts operator as well and I've also noticed I don't know if it's in the chat or in the q&a it didn't end when Barry left the arts council the the funding photography uh carried on with Amanda King um and then it's carried on when the arts council got devolved to the regions and you know we're now in Yorkshire Arts and all that so um I obviously think that there's a disparity as I touched on in my paper between what is funded to photograph the independent photographic organizations um compared to like the larger or even smaller visual arts organizations and I'm a photo geek so sometimes I do go on to the arts council website and look at how much photo organizations get annually from the arts council compared to say Mima in Middlesborough or the Whitworth in Manchester compared to the Open Eye or us so I think um it's incumbent on us to keep matter and I agree with what you're saying Andrea about forget photography but I think it's incumbent to keep making the argument towards public funded why photography still is a special case to be funded um so and again I wish I touched on in my paper with the regions as opposed to to the centre in London so I think there should be more money for photography thank you and and I guess also another thing to add to that and I guess um you know there's a few researchers and academics on the panel as well um we also need ecosystems in order to fund research and um into these organizational structures um I totally totally agree sure it's not always about end product yeah um there's a question from Sandra Plummer um she thanks everyone for their talks and she would like to ask specifically about um Northern Ireland so this question was addressed to Annabella unfortunately she's uh had to leave but let's see if anyone else can take it so Northern Ireland also produced important community photography groups such as dairy camera work in a way that overlaps with previous talks on socially engaged photography um is there any more to say about issues of censorship and criticism on photography about Northern Ireland such as Atkinson and if Andrew would like to comment on censorship of leftist documentary photography by the right wing media yeah um I think Ann might also want to say something about camera work um as well but uh just the comment I'd make which I think is kind of a feeling I have about the whole of the morning um is that we're not actually thinking about the political presence you know we're not actually thinking about this moment in time as if somehow the crisis was historical we're still in a crisis um and of course the right wing press is as right wing as it always was and we have a government which is just as right wing as kind of thatcher so I think it for me we have to kind of take um a very hard look at the current situation and try and relate you know the present modes of um of censorship to those of historical I don't think for me they've changed very much at all but what has changed of course is that you can't keep secrets you know the British state can't issue d notices in quite the same way because of the internet because we have a 24 seven culture because everybody knows everything thank you Ann did you have any comments um I'm trying to remember the questions sorry um about censorship yeah yeah um I think I think um sort of the a strength of camera cut that time was that it settled itself up as in opposition to to make I mean not just right right wing media but mainstream media and the politics of representation so I think that the photographers that were involved in back there in the early 70s they were playing a really crucial part and one of the magazines did say you know it was about how was Northern Ireland at the time be represented by the British press and I think I think these I think um again to agree with Andrew we shouldn't stop making work and in opposition um so I guess that's just what I'm saying yeah it played a role at the time and we must be mindful to keep carrying on in within our institutions or if you're a practitioner yeah he never stops but can I just say something please show it just just in relation to Northern Ireland yes a lot of work that came out of Northern Ireland always caused problems for the British Council but that didn't stop us showing it um perhaps the most important work was the was the work of Rita Donner and Willie Docherty they're always controversial and and mainly and I always remember Richard Hummelton's incredible installation of an NHS operating table I think it was shown in London too uh at the Venice Biennale in the in the 1990s it was so strong so political on the television was the photo you know it was Thatcher talking about the cuts and of course it did it didn't ruffle a lot of um ruffle a lot of people who are funding funded us but of course we went ahead because you know that work was important and Richard Hummelton was um an important artist so they they did get away with it but only it just depended on the political temperature of the time but so we always tried to push things as far as we could go but they we did get even Rita Donner um Richard's partner often uh we were told that her work was too explosive to show but we did show it so that wasn't just Conrad Atkinson but he was the the most will um the media court hold of that one but there were many others thank you Brett and Taus over to you thank you Shira yes I just wanted to add something because the two most popular issues of camera work I just finished my chapter on these those camera works I can see that and were the issue number 14 on Northern Ireland and the issue on Loisium and um it also links the two well issues but in different definitions and links to what someone got to say about Blackness Blackness being in relationship to power and especially the 70s and 80s so I feel like also something that would be interesting to talk about would be the the the conversation going on about Northern Ireland and the conversation goes on about Blackness in Britain at that time two good thesis subjects there yeah I'll leave that here another person then you've got enough of your play Taus yes and just to close us out um I think there's been multiple questions around um you know does the need for photography specific organizations um is that need still present I think we've gone back and forward on that um today um and Taus similarly with with I kind of wanted to ask you uh with autograph um our autograph goes a step further to be a space for Black artists um and I'd just like to finish by giving everyone the opportunity to respond um to to that idea of the future of photography institutions that's a big question shall we we haven't got enough time any any final comments before we close out well let's hope the ecology remains as mixed because I do think we need a a mixer of smaller agencies middle-styles institutions and the major museums it's it's good to have the mix but I'm a little worried at the moment that uh everybody's a little bit pre post COVID COVID a bit in crisis I would say that I know that I regard to what you said Brett yes I believe yeah I think the ecology within the photo system whatever that means it's important but I want to see communication between the larger institutions and and the so-called perceived smaller ones because communication particularly particularly now in this day and age it's so so important and and mutual respect exactly yeah I think I'd like to say something about autograph and about the fact that for the past few years now autograph has been feeding the tapes of this world the DNA of this world and all that the catching on we've been mentioning so I think the questions for autograph and autograph's future would be and I think they are kind of figuring it out right now and um and doing the best in order to to redefine their wall in order to for for them to stay relevant in their mission and their purpose and the reasons why they were established so I think there's a crucial moment happening now there's the big institution catching up and using autographs work for the last two decades and autographs having to find a new place in wall and maybe this lies with young emerging up and coming image makers I don't know I'll leave that for the team at autographs to figure that out but yeah thank you Taos and that's exactly what I was alluding to actually that um when the big institutions do catch up they they use a lot of they draw on the work of of the more specific organizations that have done the hard work for so long and that's what I meant about respect and communication I was being polite fantastic um thank you everyone we're going to draw this to a close um and before I sign off I'd like to say thank you to the speakers uh from today's session and David Taos Andrew and Annabella and thank you also to the audience um for your really insightful questions and um discussion this morning and thank you of course to the photographers gallery and Paul Mellon Center um and I'd also like to mention the podcast that has been recorded earlier this week um between Sarah and Brett by ASAP