Thank you both fascinating papers that really highlighted Spence and Salties trusts and interests.
The conversation between Gerry Spence and Rosewater was really something I was keen on in order to showcase their techniques,
methods and ways of working for themselves, but also for but also and maybe also bovell for others.
Recurring in transversal adieus could be collaboration and collectiveness, selfish and self representation.
The importance of print of the printed matter. Books and magazines.
Photo tech chirality. Writing as empowerment reusing. Over and over again of their language, their own words.
And no own vocabulary. And obviously idea of the archive.
So. And how the archive and the existence becomes central for recognition, as you stated, Deborah.
So maybe we can start we can open to two questions.
And I would like to maybe highlight that for and thank you for for speaking about you find us at length and speaking about Joe Dorje Gregory's project
to do a sort of British viewfinders and say that about it's so important and I really hope we'll be able to find some money in the future to do it.
And so I look at the. Yes.
CheckBox for questions and let you all think about it.
But I maybe have a question for Patricia about at the beginning of your paper, you talked about language and value,
and I found that so interesting because we've been talking about the language
you saw and should use in order to address those questions and those themes.
And I would think that Joe Spence was one of those people that was really
thinking about the words she used and the link it had it would have with body.
Can you maybe talk about a very readable. Yes.
Thank you. Tell us to the question. Spence was always very aware of of issues of class and issues of language.
She was one of the autobiographical details.
I was fascinated by was how so she went.
She went to school, didn't do particularly well, but her parents managed to send her to a secretarial course, but they had to pay for.
And one of the first things that she had to learn and the secretary, of course,
was to me to lose a working class accent and to learn to speak properly, which is one of the things that sometimes one notices.
And if you watch TV shows or having interviews, she actually doesn't speak like a working class.
One would expect working class London to sound because she knows she's really hunkered down, sort of proper kind of Queen's English.
And and also, she was very torn about this issue.
What do you mean for her to acquire a degree full stop?
Does that mean. Did that mean that then it was some kind of almost threatening situation of working class roots?
Because naturally, to a degree, she was a professional. She you.
She was now. Was she then now middle class.
And I'm I'm always very struck. Always been very struck by the clarity of her language.
I think she was very aware of how language can become a way to exclude other people.
And I think this at every level in terms of accent, in terms of speech, in terms of word one uses.
And so there is this clear strategy of maintaining Disturbia accessible.
For her, text always be very accessible. But also she's an educator throughout.
So actually, although there is this kind of idea of, you know, the image of sources, she's actually always very careful at pointing out her sources.
And she points out to sources not because she's showing off.
Oh, I right. Grab she oh, I write, you know, whatever.
Fray. But because she then can enable you to go and read them and then learn for yourself way where you can kind of acquire that same knowledge.
So there was always this educational project into CBT. This I think was very, very.
Important throughout her work,
the kind of the principle that it was to educate Hodges and to make that education available to Eidos in a sense freely outside of academia.
Interesting and. If your papers really made me think of them.
This idea of networks that has been occurring today and the idea of networks are constructed,
constructed either through the idea of family, friends, partners, lovers.
And how.
Bouffe spends Joe Spens and more Psalter really worked at constructing these networks of people around them and and working for them and with them.
And can you maybe both. Addressed this a little bit.
Yeah, I'm happy to say,
because I see that's a that's a question up on chat that says what happens to collaborative networks after they cease to be active in scholarly work,
help preserve them against the pressures of the art market?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really, really difficult question about how you preserve those networks and also what is it that would preserve them?
What kind of materials would preserve them? So is it going to be just the documents?
Is it going to be oral histories? Is it going to be the question of memory?
And then what? I mean, fortunately, many of the people are still alive now, but in 20 years, that may not be the case.
And some of both portraits I'm seeing portraits, another gold screen.
We've we've both worked with artists who we can't go back to anymore and say, but what did happen then?
How did that work? So I think there are a lot of really, really difficult questions about preserving those often very fragile, often very changeable.
And yet also you can see with mould sort of, which has a long history of working with certain people time and time again.
So, you know, I think I think it's a really, really, really important.
Yes. And Curran's just course of history for me.
Yeah. Ridgen document. So it needs to be written and published. I would, yeah.
Right. Do you agree? Well, I find this particularly.
Oh, I feel particularly ambivalent about that. On the one hand, as I was trying to indicate in my paper.
So women artists need the recognition. They need that the art deal that they need to major introspective exhibitions, they need all that.
But because of the way in which the art market works, which is about the great individual,
often what is left is actually the idea of the networks to collaborate and the people, the people,
the other people that the great taste worked with, and that this is not a question of geniuses in isolation,
but actually of moments where the circumstances are such that these reproductive networks can be formed and can thrive.
And that's kind of quite tough.
I mean, if you look online how just Spense work is captioned, for example, is very variable with our collaborators I've mentioned or not.
And why the risk is the way it is.
Know the kind of the category of who is dissed by and even archive or a lot of the archival system identify one also who steals.
And those questions can be quite complicated sometimes. Yes.
And I know he's saying the ideology. Daniel Oji of the Genius Artist is so restrictive and so exclusive.
And and I'm saying we need to make publishing and networking processes more evident and obvious in photographic education.
Which is also an interesting point about education. And Deborah mentioned al-Sisi as being a key element in this history, which is interesting to.
Sorry. There was no question about it. Are there any plans to reap reprint passion?
And I'd love to hear more about Geria, particularly the soundtrack that I think was the installation.
That's a question from Catherine. On their own.
I think that different groups of young artists are planning various projects around his passion and maybe re publishing.
I don't think so much republishing it is reinventing in terms of it.
But I've I just I know of a few, but I don't know what what what will come of them or how they might work.
Indeed, there were created several soundtracks. Several.
Musical performative poetry soundtracks for exhibitions and yes,
that would be great to help to find some way of sharing those more generally in the future.
I actually did release a secret. She released some of them, a C.D. but they're very limited supply now.
Yeah. Carter is saying,
I'm really interested in the family album work by Spence and analysis of how particular images erased the nature of working class lives.
Is there other work that has been done in this area and wonder how this area can is can is being looked at in the digital age?
Well, I know that France is happily emerging scholar.
Is working on working class women and that presence in photography and their voice in art in general, British working class women.
I think it's a complicated. It's a complex issue, partly because of this dynamic that Spence was talking about,
of how to get to, on the one hand, gain a foothold in to an area which is.
Quite carefully. In a sense, circumscribed. Often a profession of art, of being a photographer.
And then how do you keep your working class?
You know, the whole issue of definition of what is working class is is up for.
For a kind of I think a re think in terms of what does it actually mean?
What might mean today? And kind of did two questions in a way, coming to that.
Yeah. Interesting. We have a question. Right, cameleer.
That was great, different, much alter is a wonderful inspiration for me.
I wanted to ask you about her activism. She was very keen to create new visual iconography of black women.
So I wondered how she navigated through carving space in the art establishment and creating your own space as a black woman artist.
Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic. Custom. Thank you so much.
I think that's just throughout her work. I mean, I think one of the most dramatic ways that she did it, of course, was with support,
where she took these nine creative black women from a range of different, ah, writing performance music and created these fabulous images.
And that she she she made them look as close to artwork as she could notice to the whole heritage of European portraiture.
She surrounded them with massive gold frames and that she was she very much wanted to participate in this kind of synergy.
Which is part of that photographic moment between fine art and photography and making these very bold images.
And I think she did it actually through the kinds of images she created and the ways that she presented them, how she presented them.
So so using these these frames and then she had these inscribed titles, the names of the muses underneath each one.
So she very much she used that art gallery way of presenting the work so that she could insert the minutes.
She was very conscious and some of the work that she did.
Again, at Rochdale, this is so important in this history that she was able to research the ways that black figures appeared in art.
And she was looking at the ways that they were marginalised. The black servant, that the service figure is pushed to the side and is undergoing,
you know, some routine in which that they're always offering something to the white figure.
So she wanted to completely unravel,
laughed and took to completely transform that and to actually put these black when creators right in the centre of the frame.
She says that she wants to put them in the centre of the frame.
And in the centre of the institution.
And she she continues different ways of working and doing that, whether she's working in photography, whether she's working in collage.
Would she then say interested in taking a small collage and enlarging it to make it a gallery work?
So I think she's got lots and lots of artistic strategies for creating a new official iconography of black women.
I think she does it in lots of ways. And she just so where the spaces that she's working in and what she can do with those spaces.
So thank you for your question. Thank you.
Oh, sorry. Patricia, do you want to stay? I was just going to say it's very interesting how they were both very aware of strategies of representation,
made sense almost, that their op was detained. Spence was always defiantly cheap.
No, no frames. Plastic Lamby nations. No agreement was.
But they were both kind of very conceited about why things have to be presented the way in which they were being presented.
It was never just a kind of afterthought. Interesting.
Thank you. Thank you both for your great comments and answers.
I think we can, you know, have a short break before the fourth panel.