Exercise: Survival Programmes

Reading the article "Survival Programmes" showed some marvellous photography by the three collaborators Nicholas Battye,Chris Steele-Perkins and Paul Trevor. The images were taken in the early 1970's and republished twenty fives years later, still looking very fresh yet with some nostalgia and a marker that times have indeed improved.

The work captured poverty and social injustice in the inner cities of the UK&I. It also combined a literal narrative of comments, thoughts and views of those living in the photographs which I found intriguing. The concept on breaking free was one of those thoughts, so not so much a form of "survival" but of one escape as well perhaps.

The images are all shot in black and white, this gives the timeless age of documentary and keeps them both in the past but also in a time that could be anytime.

Being put together by a magazine I have to wonder if the editor has manipulated the message of the images. Many of them are about oppression not from each other through gangs but oppression by the state. Does this distort the real message or poverty and social injustice and use it as a political message that may have a wider audience and cause more awareness? Why did the state have to intervene? This has not been answered in the short number of images available but does demonstrate how documentary can easily be manipulated.

Survival Programmes

With that said though the images do also show survival of a more personal nature and I really, really liked the following image. It has so much going on in it, you would think that it was staged. A truly wonderful image showing a time of relief perhaps through the hardships of life.