Sam McGuire

(she/her)

Overview

I am a PhD candidate at Cardiff University's School of Journalism, Media and Culture, researching 'The Valleys Project Archive at Ffotogallery: Community, Photography & Democracy in South Wales, 1978-2028'. My ESRC-funded studentship is part of the Welsh Graduate School for the Social Sciences (WGSSS) Journalism, Digital Media and Democracy Pathway.

In 1983, Cardiff’s Ffotogallery initiated the Valleys Project, a photographic survey of South Wales. Over the course of six years, the gallery commissioned eight photographers and took on the projects of two more, in order to document ‘the life and landscape’ of the region ‘as fully as is photographically possible’. Ffotogallery invited proposals for commissions ‘based upon personal experience, curiosity, affection or even disenchantment’, and noted they would give preference to photographers ‘living and working in Wales’ (Ffotogallery 1984).

The Valleys Project aimed to document changes to the region following the closure of collieries and steelworks after two hundred years of industrial activity.  In an exhibition press release, Ffotogallery announced, ‘the Valleys are changing, but to what, remains in question’. Through images of post-industrial landscapes, disused collieries, and new factories replacing heavy industry, the commissioned photographers captured the physical signs of the region's social and economic difficulties.

But alongside this, three photographers were described as  ‘dealing directly with Valleys’ communities’ (Ffotogallery1986). Francesca Odell, Mike Berry and Roger Tiley were commissioned in 1985 and exhibited together in January 1986. In contrast to the unpeopled landscapes of previous exhibitions, their photographs document the everyday lives of Valleys’ communities, putting names and faces to the headlines and statistics. Through analysis of the aesthetic dimension of their photographs, their biographies, photographic training and accounts of their practice, my research seeks to understand the relationships that Odell, Berry, and Tiley built with their subjects and to articulate how this sociability informs their images.

My research responds to existing accounts of documentary photography in the UK, particularly those that consider the role ‘socialism, feminism, anti-racism and other progressive ideologies’ (Gerry Badger 2022) played in developing new approaches to documentary practice in the 1970s. Photographers questioning their right to speak on behalf of the people they photographed, explored new practices that embraced ‘dialogic relationships’ between ‘external actors’ and ‘oppressed communities’ (Freire 1968). ‘Community documentary’ (Paul Carter 1979), made by photographers living alongside their subjects, was proposed as a means of challenging voyeuristic portrayals of working-class communities and giving agency to photographed subjects. My research problematises the resulting notions of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ photographer that emerged as opposing perspectives. It instead posits sociable practice as a key strategy for creating images that resist stereotype and provide opportunities for emotional connection.

In using their cameras as a social tool, photographers like Berry, Odell and Tiley entered into social contracts with their subjects. Instead of ‘violating’ the people they photographed by reducing them to empty representations of their socio-economic context, ‘to be possessed’ (Sontag 1979), they invite us to connect with them as individuals. Drawing on theoretical texts alongside qualitative research with Valleys' residents, I will consider how the sociability of these photographers' practices extends to their photographs, exploring the ways in which audiences are invited into these sociable relationships. 

• Art History
• Photography Theory
• Documentary Theory
• Aesthetics
• Cultural Studies
• Feminism
• Social History of Art
• Sociology