‘Forward from Wigan Pier’: Remaking documentary photography in the 1930s

Dell, Simon (2018) ‘Forward from Wigan Pier’: Remaking documentary photography in the 1930s. Visual Culture in Britain, 19 (2). pp. 168-188. ISSN 1471-4787

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Abstract

This article reconsiders the status of documentary photography by shifting enquiry from the making of the exposure to the processes that make the results of that act public. Instead of granting that a photograph functions in a semantic field and asking ‘How did this signify?’, this article explores the question: ‘How did this have the opportunity to signify?’ This question is addressed by exploring the agency of editors and publishers in the rather fraught production of George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier, the first edition of which featured a suite of thirty-three photographs.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	documentary photography,illustration,the road to wigan pier,working class,communism,socialism,orwell,george,gollancz,victor
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Art, Media and American Studies
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Centres > Centre for African Art and Archaeology Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Centre for European and American Art History Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Art History and World Art Studies
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	02 May 2018 15:30
Last Modified:	21 Jul 2023 09:48
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/66926
DOI:	10.1080/14714787.2018.1466723

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