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Terry Dennett & Jo Spence: Our Studio Was The World
Fighting Discrimination Against the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Community
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In 1974, photographers Terry Dennett Jo Spence made repeated visits to 'illegal' Gypsy and Traveller sites in and around London. They got to know the people who lived there, documenting their lives in sound and image. The results of their project never formed a dedicated exhibition or a comprehensive publication, either then or since. Our Studio Was The World makes this powerful and still strikingly relevant work accessible to a new audience, with over 280 newly scanned (and in some cases newly discovered) images and previously unpublished texts. As Dennett commented, Gypsies and Travellers were 'persecuted terribly... talk about the Nazis!' Today, they remain socially marginalised, over-policed and discriminated against. Together and individually, Terry Dennett and Jo Spence are among the most influential figures in radical British photography, with their impact extending far beyond image-making - into publishing, exhibiting, teaching and shaping photographic theory. Our Studio Was The World is the first in a ground-breaking trilogy of books - alongside Terry Dennett: The Crisis Project and Jo Spence: The Unknown Recordings - which explores their unpublished work, ideas and committed socialist perspective.
In 1974, photographers Terry Dennett Jo Spence made repeated visits to 'illegal' Gypsy and Traveller sites in and around London. They got to know the people who lived there, documenting their lives in sound and image. The results of their project never formed a dedicated exhibition or a comprehensive publication, either then or since. Our Studio Was The World makes this powerful and still strikingly relevant work accessible to a new audience, with over 280 newly scanned (and in some cases newly discovered) images and previously unpublished texts. As Dennett commented, Gypsies and Travellers were 'persecuted terribly... talk about the Nazis!' Today, they remain socially marginalised, over-policed and discriminated against. Together and individually, Terry Dennett and Jo Spence are among the most influential figures in radical British photography, with their impact extending far beyond image-making - into publishing, exhibiting, teaching and shaping photographic theory. Our Studio Was The World is the first in a ground-breaking trilogy of books - alongside Terry Dennett: The Crisis Project and Jo Spence: The Unknown Recordings - which explores their unpublished work, ideas and committed socialist perspective.