1937 comes alive
Schoolchildren in asphalted playground
“He found the experience of taking documentary photos particularly stressful and disliked the intrusiveness of his work. After the Second World War these anxieties persuaded him to all but abandon photography in favour of painting and textile design.”
Humphrey Spender was lurking around Bolton in Lancashire for a few weeks in 1937, using a discreet 35mm Leica camera which allowed him to explore the new notion of spontaneous documentary photography. He brought the idea back from Germany, where he had studied architecture, and absorbed his anti-Fascist politics.
“Spender experienced directly negative reactions from people who objected to being photographed and made this observation years after the project had finished: “We were called spies, pryers, mass-eavesdroppers, nosey parkers, peeping-toms, lopers, snoopers, envelop-steamers, keyhole artists, sex maniacs, sissies, society playboys.”.
Born privileged, he was a friend of Christopher Isherwood, for whom he did the first cover to Goodbye to Berlin, and the brother of Stephen Spender.
He was part of the Mass Observation group, which included Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings.
Mass Observation used a network of thousands of people recruited from 1937 onwards, to send diaries to a central depot which would keep them for posterity. It lasted in its original form until 1949, when it became an early market research company. By 1980, the moribund remains came to Sussex University, which revived it in its present form.
“Mass-Observation places a value on subjective experience, and descriptively rich material which can offer insights into everyday life.
We send a panel of writers three themed directives each year on both opinion based and personal topics; from thoughts on the London bombings and education, to pets and close relationships. …
Correspondents may email, type or write by hand, draw, send photographs, diagrams, cuttings from the press, poems, stories, letters and so on. No stress is placed on “good grammar”, spelling or style. The emphasis is on self-expression, candour and a willingness to be a vivid social commentator, and tell a good story.”
In other words, an organised version of some parts of the blogosphere, and living proof that the notion has already existed for nearly seventy years.
MO turned out to be an amazing trove of detailed information through vicious times. Along with many other writers, Tom Harrisson used the material to write Living Through the Blitz in 1976.
As I recall from memory, he used the material to conduct a fascinating study of human recall (ha). Diary entries about the first day of the war were compared with 1976 recollections of the same day, by the same people. The fit was very loose.
Tom Harrisson was a fantastic figure himself, an adventurer, anthropologist and WW2 guerilla with the Australians in Borneo. Horizon has a good summary of the man; his role in MO is described here.
Humphrey Spender later said of photography:
“..that the most valid and proper use of a camera is as a means of recording aspects of human behaviour; as time passes, social-documentary photographs gain in interest, whereas the ‘beautiful’ photograph … progressively loses interest, becomes boring.”
He died at the age of 95, after
“he returned to painting from the 1950s onwards, as well as producing murals, mosaics, wallpapers and textiles. For 20 years, he was a tutor in the Royal College of Art textile department.”
Twenty years later, I started school in a place like that. But my family took care I was dressed respectable.
Via Plep.