Taking photos

Taking photos
Credit: Test credit

Photography has enriched the MO collections since the project’s early days.  It was particularly integral in realising Tom Harrisson’s vision of ‘an anthropology of us’, as it provided a way to capture unmediated scenes of daily life.

'Worktown ' Project

Having conducted anthropological studies abroad in the New Hebrides, Harrisson was interested in applying ethnographic study at home, to see what could be learnt about British culture.  This interest led to the ‘Worktown Project’, in which a team of Observers (made up of middle class students and working class people from Bolton) observed people in their every day lives as unobtrusively as possible.

Humphrey Spender

Harrisson’s impulse towards capturing ‘the real’, led him to Humphrey Spender, who was to become the resident photographer of the Worktown Project, 1937 - 1940. Spender’s candid documentary style was ideally suited to the interests of MO- over the course of the study he produced over 900 photos, providing a wonderfully vivid and rich account of life in pre-war industrial Britain.

See all of Humphrey Spencer’s Worktown photographs on the Bolton Museum website or see a selection of them in Photos from MO archive.