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The founder and director of Mount
Pleasant Media Workshop 1979-1992, Judy Harrison is practising
photojournalist, a member of Format Photographers
and a Senior Lecturer in photography at the University
of Portsmouth. Judy has published and exhibited
widely. A director on several arts and cultural
organisations, she has also been involved in photographic
conferences, seminars and debates around the use
of photography in formal and informal education
and in a wide and varied number of social settings.
After a long process of learning and consolidating
particular methods and technique, I was very interested
in doing two things really. The first and foremost
was using photography beyond simply an aesthetic
medium; as an art form, in a social context. The
idea for connecting photography with language
development in education involved taking photography
much further both as a learning aid and a representational
tool in a growing political, cultural and social
context.
So
I went around all the schools in Southampton to
see who would be interested in using photography
within their educational context. The school that
showed the most interest was Mount Pleasant middle
school whose 90% intake of minority ethnic children,
who at that time had started to produce their
own reading books using a variety of drawn imagery.
In 1977 there were very few educational learning
resources reflecting a multiracial content and
what existed was often characterised by misleading
stereotypical imagery.
This
created an opportunity to use photography in both
a new and positive way. The school input started
in a very basic way and we had to overcome the
first major problem of a lack of resources. In
those days there wasn't a darkroom at the school
so we used a darkroom at La Sainte Union teacher
training college where groups of children were
taught how to use cameras, develop and print their
own photographs that were then made up into their
own reading books, visual learning aids and games
and used within the classroom situation to reflect
the reality of their particular lives, cultures
and communities. A clear plan and strategy was
implemented over the two years to work in partnership
with the teachers and the children I worked closely
with the teachers and the children so it rapidly
became a three way collaborative effort which
I think was quite unusual.
By
the end of the two years when the fellowship finished,
we had amassed a considerable amount of material
and I felt that it had only just started and there
was significant potential to carry on. It became
the first photography project to be run by and
within the Black and Asian community and use photography
to address issues of anti-racism. The first important
step was to attract further funding. I approached
Southampton Council for Racial Equality who showed
interest in jointly establishing the project.
In
the early days their involvement was crucial not
just by employing me and taking over the management
but in maintaining a continuation of existing
funding and applying for further grants to enable
the project to be funded properly in its own right.
Subsequently, we received funding from the Calouste
Gulbenkian foundation, the Arts Council of Great
Britain, Hampshire County Council who gave an
urban aid grant and later help from Hampshire
Education Authority. By the early 1980s, Mount
Pleasant Photography Workshop, as it was then
known had acquired a special as well as national
recognition as a unique project whose success
and strength was unequalled in the U.K. at the
time.
The
whole aspect of what we were doing was reflected
in the commitment of the head of the Mount Pleasant
school donating a large former Victorian washroom
in 1978 to enable us to operate from a permanently
equipped darkroom. This represented a major coup
for the project and granted us a luxury of a huge
space within the school in contrast to occupying
a small temporary darkroom under the stairs of
what is now the workshop's equipment cupboard.
Because
we had little money the equipment was governed
by what we could afford. From the outset we decided
it was of no use running a project like this and
producing blurry, out of focus pictures. So, we
started off with very basic equipment including
a number of plastic Russian
Cosmic Symbol camera
which despite only costing £10 each, were
fitted with a high quality glass lens, capable
of producing sharp images. Although this was as
much determined by an idea of what would the children
would be able to use it soon became apparent that
they could use much more technically complex and
sophisticated equipment, almost as well as I could.
We soon realised that even the youngest children
could produce very competent pictures and prints.
As the Cosmic Symbols broke down they were gradually
replaced with a number of Pentax
K1000's which
the workshop still uses. My philosophy was to
give the children good equipment both for taking
and printing photographs. Because we gave them
the respect to look after complex technical equipment,
most of the time the children were far more responsible
than the adults so much so that they were allowed
to borrow the cameras a week at a time a decision
which initially surprised some people. Likewise
we gradually built up the darkroom equipment from
a mixture of second hand but essentially good
quality basic Durst enlargers
The
decision to work in black and white was determined
by both cost and an ability to produce prints,
relatively easily. We wanted the children to do
it themselves and although we made a number of
tape - slide films in colour these were commercially
processed. Colour printing would not have adhered
itself to that situation; being too complicated,
slow and laborious which for the children would
have been a total put off.
In
1982 the workshop separated from Southampton Council
for Racial Equality to establish its own independent
identity, setting up its own management committee,
drawn from individual members of different groups
within the Black and Asian community which in
those early days involved parents, children alongside
the establishment of independent youth and women's
groups.
Because
I was aware of the potential sensitivity of photography,
we made a policy that involved talking to people
in their own homes and taking photographs back
to explain how they may be used. This approach
encouraged a great deal of trust and respect between
the community and the workshop, a process that
wasn't achieved in six months but took years of
commitment.
The
workshop grew up within the prevailing climate
of the mid seventies that was already questioning
the established politics of documentary photography.
Central to this was the whole issue of representation,
identity and the importance of cultural diversity
which initiated by photographers like Jo
Spence,
became the subject of numerous articles in magazines
like Ten-8 and Camerawork and venues like The
Half Moon Gallery that all became involved with
various aspects of community photography in the
1980s.
Although
a lot of the work we produced was on a small scale,
concentrated in the immediate area, we started
doing much bigger projects involving a large amount
of the work being made into exhibition material
in the form of panels that were hired out both
locally and nationally as part of a touring exhibition
service to a variety of schools and community
venues.
Although
the politics of representation, identity and culture
were the prime issue, there was no separation
between technical and creative considerations,
and aesthetic treatment was of utmost importance.
In 1989 some of the children's work was included
in 'Fabled Territories', The New Asian Photography
Exhibition in Britain curated by Sunil Gupta a
founder member of Autograph the Association of
Black Photographers. The work had a national and
international significance touring major art venues
around the country as well as being shown in Vancouver.
This first exhibition in Britain consisting purely
of British black and Asian photography was important
in reflecting the quality of statements made by
the children of Mount Pleasant school concerning
their own identity and culture.
I
feel, perhaps one of the most interesting and
historically expansive projects that I worked
on whilst at the workshop was the history of the
migration of the Bahtra Sikhs from the Punjab
to Southampton which was undertaken exclusively
by a group of all ages from the Sikh community
It took a long time to do all the interviews which
were originally in Punjabi, transcribed in Punjabi,
then translated into English and finally edited
in both languages. The photographs assumed a new
significance as part of an important, expanding
historical and cultural archive.
In
1992 I decided it was time to leave the workshop
as I felt I had reached saturation point and needed
to move on. I also wanted to spend more time doing
my own photography.
If
I was to start the project all over again? Its
a difficult question because of the enormous difference
in the political climate. With hindsight, setting
up from scratch even today would involve teething
processes that would still take a long time to
overcome. The fact that digital photography wasn't
around in 1979 meant that we were reliant on using
traditional darkroom techniques.
I
do feel though that the current interchange between
digital and chemical imaging has strengthened
conventional photography, rather than having a
negative effect. There's a lot of exciting new
photographic work being produced now where there's
a wide cross over of photographic disciplines.
You only have to look at the work being exhibited
nationally as part of the Photo 98 Year of Photography
and the Electronic Image. to realise that there
is a new freedom in the styles of work; a growing
fluidity in existing boundaries which in lots
of ways are strengthening the diversity of statements
that photographers are trying to make. That's
not to say the traditional documentary image no
longer has its place, but rather this new creative
freedom allows differing styles to have a place
alongside each other.
As
a photographer, both methods are important but
technology is still merely a tool to carry forward
the real importance of the workshop which was
gaining the trust, recognition and participation
of the local community.
During
the whole time at the workshop I continued to
work as an independent freelance photographer;
which has always been very important to me to
carry on my own photographic work During the early
1980s, I was regularly commissioned to carry out
work for voluntary groups, community groups, trade
unions etc., including two books for the Trades
Union Congress using photography not just as an
art form but also as a vehicle of social comment.
In
1986 I was invited to join Format photographers;
an all women's issue based picture agency and
library, based in London.The important issue for
me in joining Format was that it wasn't just an
ordinary picture agency but a group that has been
instrumental in helping to get the work of women
photographers recognised. It always offered images
with a different perspective and it has retained
a deep concern in how photographers images are
being used.
I
had a number of exhibitions, perhaps the most
significant being, 'She Calls her Song', a one
person show at Southampton City Art Gallery in
1994 as part of SIGNALS; the Festival of Women
Photographers. SIGNALS put on exhibitions and
events throughout the U.K. and put many women
photographers on the agenda in terms of the exhibition
circuit and gave them the recognition they long
deserved.
In
1994, I was commissioned to produce the photographs
for the book, 'Hampshire A Sense of Place', by
Peter Mason. This involved landscape photography
something which was to be very different from
the majority of my other work.
What
am I doing now? I'm a Senior
Lecturer in Photography at the University of
Portsmouth, still an active
member of Format and combining this with carrying
on my other work. I'm interested now, not only
in the single image but also in imagery working
on a multiple of layers and layers of meaning,
using text, narrative and personal histories.
My
most recent work resulted from a visit to India
in 1997 last year with my children who are mixed
race. We went back to the village where my husband
was born and spent his childhood. For many years
I've been interested in migration, survival, and
people being displaced by boundaries of all types
not only territorial boundaries. My new work is
about the cycle of migration; time, space and
history, particularly the whole notion of the
narrative of journeys, going backwards and forwards
and what effect this has on people.
Judy
Harrison was interviewed by Andrew Ball 1999
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