| Details | | Publication Date: | 1995-06-01 | | Series: | Comedia Series | | Editor: | Jo Stanley |
| Size | | Height: | 9.8 in | | Width: | 7.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 32.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
Jo Spence was one of Britain's pioneering photographers. Born into a working-class London family, she worked for many years as a studio photographer. Her political concerns led to documentary photography. Soon after completing her degree in the theory and practice of photography, she discovered she had breast cancer. Through her struggle to come to terms with the illness, to find non-invasive treatments and to share her experience with others, she developed unique ways of using photography.
Cultural Sniping brings together a wide range of Jo Spence's photographs and writings for the first time. Through images and texts she explores complex issues of gender, class, health and the body, and their impact on her understanding of personal history and the construction of identity.
Cultural Sniping includes images from Spence's early work in documentary photography and from her pioneering photo-therapy projects, undertaken in collaboration with other
photographers. In her later work Spence faces up to the experience of illness and dying, and Cultural Sniping reproduces work from her Return to Nature and Death Mask series, in which she tries to come to terms with the reality of death. Jo Spence's commitment to engaging with personal experience, political understanding and critical theory make her writing and photography a vital contribution to our understanding of the politics of representation.
Industry Reviews
In 1980, at the age of 46, Spence began degree work in the theory and practice of photography. During her studies she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Before her death in 1992, Spence had become one of Britain's leading photographers. Best known for two photographic series, "Return to Nature" and "Death Mask," her professional work focused on issues of sex, class, health, gender, and investigations of self and society. This book samples that work and her early documentary photographs, phototherapy projects, and some collaborative efforts. Accompanying the photographs are a number of essays relating to photography and society on topics such as class conflict, gender roles, homophobia, and class consciousness. One of the best pieces is an interview with the eminent photohistorian John Taylor, one of the founders of Ten-8, a leading British sociopolitical photography journal. Though the text is often filled with the lingo of psychology, sociology, and politics (including Marxist), the writing is often uncommonly insightful. And Spence's images are likewise startling and provocative. Recommended for contemporary photography collections. Kathleen Collins, New York Transit Museum Archives, Brooklyn
Adams
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