In this time of glorious strike action, our archive of the month looks at how photography can by used as a tool for workers struggle. The Worker Photographer was a project initiated by Terry Dennett in the late 1970s. It explicitly set out to provide a partisan representation of working-class struggles through the medium of photography. This approach took inspiration from Communist agitprop of the interwar period, such as the work of
Der Arbeiter Fotograf and the Film & Photo League. As well as the industrial struggles of workers at Ford, themes addressed included safety in the workplace and the depiction of class relations in the bourgeois press. You can find full reproduction of the Worker Photographer in our publication Camera Forward.
Material from Terry Dennett’s collection is currently part of the an exhibition in Halle für Kunst Lüneburg in collaboration with Alexandra Symons-Sutcliffe.