The Photographic Image in Digital Culture: Susan Murray.

Source: Murray, L. (ed.) (2013) The Photographic Image in Digital Culture: Susan Murray. Abingdon: Routledge. (Pp165-82)

Revisiting Flickr

• Flickr images organised in groups and batches (technological features) and fetishization, classification, collection, memory, flow, taste, signification, identification (functions).
• Members page – “decentralised network of similar pages” contributing “to the construction of a community [through keywords tags, comments and contact lists] and larger collection of photographs.” Lister: 2013:165)
• “Collaborative experience: a shared display of memory, taste, history, daily life and judgement through which amateur and professional photographers collectively articulate a novel, digitized (and decentralised) aesthetic of the everyday.” (Lister: 2013:165)
• Digital camera is necessary to document daily life, resulting in a temporal shift with our association of everyday images and narratives about ourselves and our relationship with the world.
• Online photo-sharing with Facebook makes it accessible for anyone to upload whole album in one go to share with family and friends.  Other sites focus on on-line storage with personalised memorabilia such as mugs, I Phone cases.
• Flickr and Facebook differ in sharing with the community which has enabled the two to remain in the digital world.
• Flickr influences the development of photographic technique – e.g. filters, calls members artists and concentrates on aesthetic practice rather than online social identities and offline lives.
• Flickr – slow photography “goal is the experience of studying some object carefully and exercising creative choice.” (Wu as cited by Lister, 2013:168) “Another redefinition in digital practice.” (Lister, 2013:168)
• Flickr blog - techniques, teaching, sharing – different from other social networking sites.

Brief history of amateur and domestic photography

Zimmerman – Kodak cameras – leisure / consumer activity. “organised social and artistic practice that was valued for its spontaneity, authenticity, naturalness and emotialism (particularly in the widespread use and reference to pictorialism).” (Lister, 2013:169) Two types of amateurs – fun or special events recording and “serious amateurs” who engaged in art and middle to upper class leisure. Professionals worked in studios. Pictorialism was inescapable; people wanted to replicate nature and so modern urban life and subjects which populate social networking sites was considered unacceptable. Zimmerman argued that this “deflected cameras, at least on the discursive level, from insertion into the day to day world of industrial capitalism.” (Lister, 2013:169)

Manovich in 1995 wrote “The logic of the digital photograph is one of historical continuity and discontinuity. The digital image tears apart the net of semiotic codes, modes and of display, and patterns of spectreship in modern visual culture – and at the same time, weaves this net even stronger. The digital image annihilates photography while solidifying, glorifying and immortalising the photograph. In short, this logic is that of photography after photography.” (Lister, 2013:170)

Theorists have now moved past the issue of indexicality and representation to study the materiality, universal presence and ephemeralness of digital photographs and question whether the value and meaning of the images is diminished. Cohen studied photobloggers and noticed that they appeared to post banal images to stress that their images are not traditional snapshot images but life as they experience it.

Transience, collection and the everyday image

Photography linked to history, memory, absence and loss by several writers including Barthes and Benjamin. Pollen argues that Flickr and digital photography websites is more transient than loss. Flickr moves the old photos to the back when new ones are uploaded, providing an autobiographical account of the photographer.

“Mobile imagining as autobiographical practice proceeds according to a logic of catalogue or database...Such a logic privileges techniques of selection and (re)combination, which do not operate according to cause-effect relations.” (Heidi Rae Cooley as cited by Lister, 2013:174)

Some categories on Flickr have very strict rules on what can be included but although the images are all a specific type, they are all unique. E.g doors and windows in decay.

Line is blurred on Flickr between serious amateurs and professionals but clues are present such as comments and followers. New category emerging called “ephemera” because photographs are not as precious as they once were. Disposable – images on memory cards are deleted. Visible straight away and the owner can decide if they keep the image. Taken as everyday moments. Group photo pools have larger albums – shared interests and fetishes.

“Digitisation allows for reinvigoration or remediation of what is essentially a form of album making, which can co-exist with other forms of memory making.” (Hand as cited by Lister, 2013:176)

“While digital photography has become a social tool for “identity, formation, communication and experience” it also remains – like the forms of photography before it – a tool of memory.” (Jose Van Dijk as cited by Lister, 2013:176)

“Digital personal photography gives rise to the new social practices in which pictures are considered visual resources in the microcultures of everyday life. In these microcultures, memory does not so much disappear from the spectrum of social use as it takes on a different meaning.” (Jose Van Dijk as cited by Lister, 2013:176)

Photo sharing and communal aesthetics

Pollen compares Flickr to Bourdieau’s Camera Club studies in that they have similar aspirations and practices although Flickr is much larger with its various communities. Flickr in partnership with Getty images so if some images are chosen, members are paid. Pollen argues that the lines between what is an acceptable image and what is not is blurred, as well as amateurs and professionals being indistinguishable. Whereas old photographs may be scratched or grainy, people seek to do this by decreasing the resolution or compression or adding filters on Instagram or Snapseed; what Manovich calls manipulation.

“While digital photography itself has not revolutionised photography or led to the loss of authenticity of an image as predicted early on, it has significantly altered our relationship to the practice of photography (when coupled with social networking software) as well as to our expectations for and interactions with the image and everyday aesthetic.” (Lister, 2013:180)

When is a cliche not a cliche? Reconsidering mass produced sunsets. Annebella Pollen

Source: Pollen, A. (n.d.) When is a cliche not a cliche? Reconsidering mass produced sunsets. Either / and. Available at: http://eitherand.org/reconsidering-amateur-photography/when-cliche-not-cliche-reconsidering-mass-produced/ last accessed 27/6/17

 Sunsets are ephemeral. Every one is different. Sunset photographs on the other hand are "the most predictable, culturally devalued and banal of all image making practices." (Pollen, A. n.d) Beautiful like a chocolate box through misuse, or the type of subject matter which amateurs strive to photograph well.

As early as 1908, Adolf Loos, a Viennese artist claimed that simplicity was an asset and beautifying was a crime.  John Cooper Powys in Meaning of Culture (1930) suggested that “the less cultured you are, the more you require from nature before you can be roused for reciprocity” (Pollen, A) implying that amateurs took waterfalls and sunsets whilst the more experienced were happy with grass blades on a stone.

"Photographs create the beautiful and - over generations of picture-taking - use it up. Certain glories of nature... have been all but abandoned to the indefatigable attentions of amateur camera buffs. The image-surfeited are likely to find sunsets corny; they now look, alas, too much like photographs." (Sontag as cited by Pollen, n.d) meaning photographic mass-production saturates the market and the awe is lost as well as declaring that sunset photographs are the products of the aesthetically naive. Sontag further explains that "In photography's earliest decades, photographs were expected to be idealized images. This is still the aim of most amateur photographers, for whom a beautiful photograph is a photograph of something beautiful, like a woman, a sunset." 

In 1966, photography critic Julian Stallabrass's ‘Sixty Billion Sunsets’ studied the photographic practice of amateurs and concluded that they were similar to the object in question. His criticism "of mass photographic practice is based on what he perceives to be its overwhelmingly conventionalised sameness (unlike elite art practices, which are positively polarised as avant-garde, creative and distinctive). In commodified camera culture, everyone takes photos of similar things."  (Pollen, A) He declared that all sunset photographs were the same.

This idea continued throughout the 1960's where cliched photographs were given a low cultural status, being thought of as having a "limited aesthetic vision and an undeveloped practice." (Pollen, A) Sontag explained that as photographers became more experienced in art and photography, they grew out of taking cliched pictures. In the 1960’s Sociologists Robert Castell and Dominique Schnapper studied a camera club in which a member echoed these sentiments, suggesting that as photographers gain experience they don’t do banal or pretty.

It seems that training develops photographic vision. Bourdieu questioned whether taste is inherent in social hierarchy and cultural experience and reinforces differences between social groups with a single sunset image. Because everyone can access photography and there is not a judgmental coding system, interpretation is subjective so people will display their social dispositions based on how they take a photograph. He found that “the proportion who declare that a sunset can make a beautiful photo is greatest at the lowest educational level, declines at intermediate levels [...] and grows strongly again among those who have completed several years of higher education and who tend to consider that anything is suitable for beautiful photography.” (Bourdieu as cited by Pollen)

Advice in magazines, online journals, blogs and camera clubs still teach and confuse amateurs with technical and aesthetic advice to aspire to “a good photo”, recognising that not all sunsets are the same.

In 1987, the One Day for Life large-scale charity amateur photography competition, where a national press campaign encouraged “everyone with a camera” to take a photograph of everyday life in Britain competing for a place in a chronological 24-hour book. There were 50,000 photographic rejects of the competition and an archive containing thousands of sunset examples is stored at the University of Sussex. The overall winning photograph was a sunset.

The context of the book suggests that sunrise and sunset within the 24hour time frame. Capture this successfully and you could be featured in the book. This opens the cliché to all who enter the competition rather than just amateurs. Pollard argues that the sunset becomes the signified and signifier of amateur photography. If the book is about amateur photography, photographers may choose to shoot the ordinary, everyday subjects, or even bad photographs. The cover design was a sunset to represent a book of photographs rather than other subjects such as dogs.

The narrative of the images included sunsets (of) and social and aesthetic narratives such as industrial chimneys against the sunset depicting disease (about) often with text because the book was to raise money for charity.

“Their potential to be, at once, undistinguished and prize-winning, clichéd and rich with supporting meaning, is evidently the case with the overall ‘winning’ image, which, despite its ‘chocolate box’ appearance, was a photograph taken in and of the Republic of Ireland, and was intended to function as a critical political commentary on the nationalist limitations of One Day for Life’s British focus at the time of the Troubles.” (Pollen, A)

The digital culture has made us more visually-literate times and artistically knowledgeable, and although the dissemination of images has changed, preferred photographic subjects do not differ much with photographs of friends, family and leisure still dominating. Even advice is still similar to historical advice. Pollard argues that the amount of images produced has increased significantly along with the number opportunities for circulation.

Lynn Berger explains that images become more stereotyped because people see thousands of images of the same subject e.g. 6,000 photographs uploaded to Flickr each minute.  In Penelope Umbrico’s ongoing project of 8,730,221 Suns from Flickr (2011), sunsets are the untouchable photographic subject. In 2006, she found half a million photographs on Flickr. “She then cropped just the sun from these images and printed a partial representation of the mass in a grouped format that borders on the mathematical sublime. The title of this work changes whenever the work is exhibited to reflect the ever-rising quantity of sunsets available on Flickr on the day that the work is hung; currently there are over 9 million examples. Umbrico says that “the title itself has become a comment on the ever-increasing use of web-based photo-communities, and a reflection on the ubiquity of pre-scripted collective content there.” (Pollen, A)

People continue to photograph sunsets and other clichés because each photograph is exclusive to the photographer. Sunsets are still submitted for competition or public appraisal, representing a lasting, shared significance. Sunsets could be themed linguistically relating Victor Burgin to photography – “signalling “repetition with different significations, or one repeated picture with different captions… As Richard Dyer has argued about stereotypes: they “are a very simple, striking, easily-grasped form of representation but are none the less capable of condensing a great deal of complex information and a host of connotations.” (Pollen, A)

Assignment 2 The archive Rufford Colliery

Rework of Assignment 2

Amendments to Assignment 2

Following research around Nicky Bird's work, linking the past with the present and streamlining the subject seemed the best way forward. I revisited the pit landscape, walked around the village several times with print outs of the photos I had collected to source their location, included quotes from people I spoke to and found a poem written at the time of the disaster to raise money for the families.

I visited Bilsthorpe Heritage Museum which is run by ex-miners to understand more about the process of mining and the working lives of miners which enhanced my knowledge of Rufford Colliery.  I found this hugely beneficial when visiting Lincoln Camera Club with Hazel to see Chris Upton's Thoresby Colliery presentation.

I planned to print the book with a soft cover in keeping with the local heritage section in Nottinghamshire’s rural and central libraries. Many of the pamphlets are produced by individuals or organisations, and after listening to Chris Upton’s anecdotes about printing, possibly because of the cost involved. Blurb’s soft cover looked quite glossy and I was unsure of the final result, so I simplified the image hoping to make visibility clearer. Having only had hardback books printed in the past, I used Blurb’s discount offer to experiment with printing in both formats, so I can choose the best fit for assessment. The soft cover looked acceptable to me.

This work is now more conversational between people and the land rather than a collection of photographs where the reader has to muddle on through their own.

Thoresby Colliery, Chris Upton - Photographer, Lincoln Camera Club, 29/6/2018

Hazel (fellow OCA Photography student) invited me to an evening with her camera club in Lincoln as I am interested in the work of Chris Upton, a local photographer who photographed Thoresby Colliery, Nottinghamshire’s last working coal mine as it prepared for closure.

Chris gave a very informative slideshow presentation covering the camera he used, some of the social aspects of the mine, some of the pitfalls and challenges associated with his project. Hazel and I agreed with his comments, which sounded as though he was voicing what we had experienced through OCA course exercises and assignment work. On revisiting Chris’s work, I found his photos made more sense as I had visited Bilsthorpe Heritage museum and spoken to local ex-miners about the coal mining process. Mining (and the miners strike) is still a very emotive subject which rumbles through mining communities as it split families apart. It was enlightening to hear about financial considerations, promotions offered by book shops, print runs, choices made with printing, media campaigns and exhibitions.

Assignment 2 Tutor Feedback

Overall comments

A thorough, engaging and well-researched submission.

Feedback on assignment

You have themed your images based on: the present (the nature reserve and Harworth Estate), the present (Colliery Lane, the pit, the railway, etc.) and mention wanting to concentrate on the tower throughout as a kind of touch point. You have researched widely, using images from local library archives, online archives and collected over 130 images from these sources.

You also discuss your audience and mention showing the work in its R&D phase to others. You mention the need for an authentic voice (ex-miners, or the relatives/children etc. of ex-miners) rather than use pre-existing materials. I agree with you here. It might be useful to record (or find recorded some first person accounts) from those who worked (or were related to those who worked) in the colliery and also those who live there now. These two narratives could usefully be juxtaposed perhaps? I think this would add a very useful dimension to your research. The landscape tells us a certain amount – part of the story but of course not all of it. I think it’s important to ask yourself at the outset of the project: what do I want to say about this subject? Why? And how exactly am I going to do it. Bear in mind that this is a story that you could easily go on exploring over many assignments and that it will be possible to further develop and extend this research for quite a while if this is of interest to you.

Regarding the images themselves: you have produced some very effective imagery (lovely image over two pages of the pond rippling outwards which seems to speak to the idea of history constantly affecting the landscape). Your postcard strategy work well too. As mentioned, you have used imagery form the archive, the internet and found image. It might be useful to separate certain types of images out (ie a series of the postcard images only, etc) and see how these sit together as a single typology? A common mistake when photographers are beginning to find their voice is to put all of your ideas into one piece of work. I’d say there were actually at least three series of work in this book: the found newspaper clippings, the postcard montages and the documentary landscapes. Each of the series (perhaps accompanied by a first-person account or similar) cold make a good series. One is past, one is present and perhaps another could be future?

This is a good position to be in. You’ve done lots of research and now is the time to filter that out into separate components. In its final form, it doesn’t all have to be integrated into one piece of work. That said, your Blurb submission is well laid out throughout but could do with some playing about with possible edits. As I’m sure you are aware, meaning is conferred in the book by the edit not by the single image so bear that in mind when you are experimenting with different running orders/selections etc.

This is a thoroughly researched and engaging submission and bodes well for the future. Keep up the good work!

Reference: Roni Horn (re: use of text and landscape photography) in her series Still Water: https://vimeo.com/64165737 and http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/horn-no-title-p13058

Nick Bird (Re: the representation of working class communities in the Uk (including mining communities): http://nickybird.com/bookworks/beneath-the-surface-hidden-place-2010/

(Nicky is also involved in the organization Family Values. They have frequent conferences and you might be interested in attending as their remit fits your interests well: https://familytiesnetwork.wordpress.com/news/

Coursework

See main body of the text

Research

See main body of the text

Learning Log

See main body of the text

Suggested reading/viewing

See main body of the text

Pointers for the next assignment / assessment

As discussed, try to tease apart the different themes presented in book form (typology of landscapes, one of found images, one of montages) and experiment with different edits of your narrative. You have lots of material and ideas – don’t feel you have to evidence all of them in your final assignment. These can also be explored in exercises etc. too.

Student feedback from Assignment 2

This was an interesting assignment to put together. I agree with Wendy’s comments that there is a little of everything in it, which I will start to tease out and develop into a smaller piece of work. I am interested to see what I could do with postcards or documentary landscapes. This was a piece of work which developed as I went along, influenced by some archive exhibitions which I had seen and so the suggestion to be clear in what I want to say at the beginning is valid. This was an assignment which kept growing when I found another link.

As follow up work, I researched Nicky Bird’s work “Beneath the Surface / Hidden Place (2007-2010). I connected with it and began to think about taking this and previous assignments to develop in a similar way at a later date. I was interested in the community involvement and how the work was presented as there is some archaeology happening locally to me but most tends to be from much older time periods. I researched the Family Values organization which I have signed up to as some of the previous posts sound fascinating and may be helpful in developing my interests.

The way in which Roni Horn uses words with her images is something which I shall explore in more detail. Her text seems to work because she encourages the viewers to read her thoughts at the time of making / taking the photographs; including anything from questioning the color, informing the viewer of the local history (including suicides) to poetry or song lyrics. In both these two examples the photographs and words work well together, so my thoughts around using narrative would work.

We spoke of Matt Collishaw’s Thresholds exhibition currently touring in Birmingham which is relevant to Digital Image and Culture. Although the exhibition is due to close this weekend, it may travel to the National Media Museum in Bradford, although there is nothing advertised as yet. I will keep an eye out for it and hope to attend.

We briefly discussed the topic I had chosen to look at for my Critical Review for Assignment 3 to which Wendy encouraged me not to become too immersed in it. There is so much information around the digital self that I think it needs planning very carefully and sticking to one or 2 case studies in order to keep it concise and within the word count.

Assignment 2

52°07’.5”N 1°06’47.1”W

This assignment is an archive of the landscape which shaped (and still affects) the village in which I live. Looking through old photographs of the village, I can remember the pit being there when I moved in, and then it disappeared 2 years later. The culture of the mining village changed as the village became a dormitory village serving Nottingham and interest is being rekindled as internet sites and the local history shelves in the libraries host records of nostalgia.

Introduction

In the late 19^th century, Rainworth was a hamlet with a scattering of farms with a single road and a Toll House. Public transport did not exist here. Just before the turn of the century came the railway, and with it the Bolsover Colliery Company looking for coal in the illustrious Nottinghamshire / Derbyshire coal fields. A pit was sunk and coal was located. From here on the village developed into a thriving community. Bolsover Colliery Company ensured that houses were built for the pit sinkers and a model village for the miners based on the garden city designs of the time. With the model village came amenities such as a drill hall, miner’s welfare, a school and later shops and a church.

The grid reference of 52°07’.5”N 1°06’47.1”W is located at the end of Colliery Lane, at the point where Harworth Estates erected a barrier preventing access to the old pit. Regeneration and conservation work is carried out in conjunction with The Wildlife Trust who maintain Rainworth Heath. There are two access points into the heath from Colliery Lane and the dismantled railways provide access to a bridleway running through the colliery site. Locals visit these edgelands to walk their dogs, cycle and ride trail bikes, creating desire paths across the landscape.

This assignment is an archive of the landscape which shaped and still affects the village in which I live. A very distant memory recalls the images of the towers, partly because I had no connection with the pit. Through my research I have walked across the landscape many times, trying to piece together the enormity and domination of the main village economy which was such a principal factor in village life and now only the odd scars on the landscape remain. Discussion with ex-miner colleagues and colleagues whose husbands were miners, the varied source material which is being collated online, the local history section of the library and the token collection box in Tesco’s hoping to be selected for a community mining memorabilia project suggested that enough time has passed for people to look back on the mining industry with nostalgia. With the suggestion of a mine in Pennsylvania re-opening to mine coal in June 2017, perhaps the passion for coal mining is not dead, but the Environment Act in 1995 was really the start of monitoring air pollution. Nottinghamshire coal was notorious for being quite smoky, perhaps lending itself to use in the steel industry.

The process

Coal mining books line the local history shelves in the town library of which nothing covers Rufford Colliery. Two booklets detail images from archival material of mines which readers had in their collections and one old pamphlet on Bolsover Colliery Company contained some information and maps. Online archives ranged from a BBC project to ex-miners hosting images with information of interest to families collating their genealogy and ex-miners recollecting memories of their working life. Sekula suggests that by creating an archive of very different types of photographs, unity is achieved which is exploited by ownership of the objects. The meaning of the photograph is liberated as the archive is collated and knowledge is created (Wells 2010:63). Archives then contradict themselves because the images are isolated but also united. (Sekula as cited by Wells, 2010:64) Coal Mining could be considered a heritage industry. Some coal mines have become tourist attractions, although I do not foresee this site becoming a place where the tourist sets up his tripod to take photographs.

I collected 130 images from books and the internet and used 35. 11 images were taken whilst exploring the area and 2 were from my archive. Photographers such as Fontcuberta, Ritchin and Schmid promote the recycling of images. The question was how to present the images in a meaningful way to the target audience? Initially this was going to be an archive in linear time order from the nature reserve to the sinking of the coal mine, uncovering the land which was being covered up by the aggregate company. Through conversation and inviting people associated with the colliery’s history to share memories with me, I developed the idea into a collection of different memories using a blank page to separate the sections. Visiting a couple of exhibitions in Nottingham (Strangers not allowed on these works and the NTU Degree Show) confirmed this works and the non–linear time order may hold the viewer’s attention for longer.

After listening to stories and reading a few on the internet it seemed that the narrative should include the length of Colliery Lane and the vast expanse of land which joined up all the local pits through which miners would walk. Fortunately, there had only been one mining disaster (more than 10 deaths occurring from an accident) at this colliery, although several had since lost their lives. Remembrance and commemoration play a big part in miners’ lives including plates, Davey lamps, coal tags and newspaper cuttings. I themed the images concentrating on the present (nature reserve) and Harworth Estates, the past and present such as Colliery Lane and the pit, relevant railways, working life, pit history, demolition and present-day remembrance. By grouping archived images in Photoshop, I could concentrate on which tower was which when presented with multiple images.

I considered whether I should add cross-stitch to the landscape photographs as a barrier because that is how the land feels. The people I shared the images with were keen to see if there was anyone they knew. This reminded me of Barthes photograph of his mother in Camera Lucida. If my target audience was to be the local community, perhaps obscuring faces or presenting barriers was not helpful.

People may recall media images from the 1984-1985 Miners Strike which provoked unrest throughout the country with an abuse of power from those in authority. At the time, the whole story was reported inaccurately, with the media taking the side of the authorities. Having studied Deller’s re-enactment of the Battle of Orgreave, I was interested to read the history of the Nottinghamshire miners because I found no photographic evidence of strikes carried out at Rufford Colliery. In fact, only 2000 out of 32,000 Nottinghamshire Miners went on strike in 1984-5. Fontcuberta suggests that interpreting documents is subjective, depending on the reader’s culture and knowledge (Hildenbrand, 2008:113). If I was to publish this book, I would need to research this area in more detail.

The risk of using archived images is that “photography…revolutionalises memory: it multiplies and democratises it, gives it a precision and a truth never before attained in visual memory, and makes it possible to preserve the memory of time and chronical evolution,” (Le Goff cited in Bate, 2010:247) explaining that family photographs act like a memorial or monument to the past following Bourdieu’s argument of “establishing the truth of social remembrance” (Bourdieu cited by Bate 2010:248).  My assignment mainly uses images digitally archived by ex-miners. There is already mismatching of dates and stories which is one of the concerns with archiving, as instead of it being a collective memory, it becomes subject to secondary revision.

Society has a thirst for archives to demonstrate validity and cohesion. To give my archive more credibility, perhaps it needs a forward from an ex-miner from who was in a position of authority at the colliery or someone who has written a book on the history of Nottinghamshire coal-mines. On the other hand, without archives memory falters, so at least there is a record of the colliery which retired miners would be able to share with their grandchildren.

References

Bate, D. (2010) The memory of photography. Photographies. 3 (2) 243-257. Available from:http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17540763.2010.499609?needAccess=true [last accessed 5^th September 2016].

Hughes, G. and Hildenbrand, K. (2008) Images of war and war of images. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Wells, L. (2010) Photography: a critical introduction. 4^th Edition. Abingdon: Routledge.

Bibliography

Fontcuberta, J. (2014) Pandora’s Camera: Photogr@phy after photography. London. MACK

Lussenhop, J. (2017) Acosta Mine: Are coal jobs returning to the U.S? In: BBC [online] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40163863 last accessed 25/06/2017

Paterson, H (2014) Miners Strike. In: Left Lion [online] https://www.leftlion.co.uk/read/2014/june/miners-strike-6734 last accessed 26/6/2017

Paterson, H (2014) Look back in anger: The miners strike in Nottinghamshire 30 years on. Nottingham: Five leaves publication. 

Schwartz, J and Cook, T (2002) Archives, records and power: The making of modern memory. Archival Science 2:1-19. Kluwer academic publishers. The Netherlands.  Available at: http://journalofburmesescholarship.org/pprs/SchwartzCook-Archives.pdf last accessed 20/06/2017

Wells, L. (2008) Allan Sekula: Reading an Archive: Photography between labour and capital: The photography reader. Abingdon: Routledge.

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