It's the purpose of this session to emphasise that the mere act of
recording is not the task of the drudge, the clerk. It can advance
our insight into the fabric, the conduct of the world. What emerges
can be used by the painter, photographer, film-maker, photographer,
poet. The film you'll see is about MASS OBSERVATION. I want to stress
the capacity for such an activity to uncover the Magickal.
Founded in 1937 by the anthropologist Tom Harrison and the poet, Charles
Madge, Mass Observation was dedicated to recording the British national
life in minute detail. Other participants were the painters William
Coldstream, Graham Bell, the collagist Julian Trevelyan, the photographer
Humphrey Spender, and the film maker Humphrey Jennings.
Mary-Lou Jennings, Humphrey Jennings, Film-Maker Painter Poet
, BFI London 1982.
David Mellor writes, "One guise which reconciled the twin demands
of the Surrealist and the Documentarist was that of the Poet Reporter.
In his BBC broadcasts of 1938, on the general theme of Poetry and
the Public, Jennings posited a unity which once existed in English
literature before the advent of the mass media in which the poet was
a kind of reporter; and poet-reporter was in fact the title adopted
by Charles Madge during these years, echoing the Utopian hopes of
Mass Observation to have reconciled science and art after their separation
brought about by the Industrial Revolution. "
Jennings'
film Spare Time (1939) was partly set in Bolton, much studied by Mass
Observation.
For a general survey of the Thirties, see Clark et al, Culture and
Crisis in Britain in the 1930's , Lawrence and Wishart, 1979
see also Sylvia Harvey, "Who wants to know what and Why",
Ten 8 , No.23
The Book arranged by Charles Madge and Tom Harrison, Penguin Books,
Harmondsworth 1939 180 x 110 cms.
Humphrey Spender speaks in the film. In his book Lensman,
he writes, " [Tom Harrison] believed as I did that press photography
was largely falsifying and irrelevant. MO was committed to `study
real life' and for this purpose the concealed prying camera was essential...At
our disgusting breakfasts in the smelly parlour of our headquarters
house, Tom Harrison would talk me into taking my camera to christenings,
Holy Communions, pubs, railway stations, public lavatories. Away from
headquarters I was very much on my own, sometimes, frightened, embarrassed,
bored and depressed. To the working people of this town my manner
of speaking was la de fucking da . To me their language and accent
was foreign."
"Democracy is not simply an inherited freedom to do what you
like or what others like to supply. It inevitably involves, among
other things, the intelligent operation of society for the optimum
benefit of all the people; and for this end the people need to be
given every facility and encouragement, both to ber informed in fact
and to be capable of intelligent decision in theory." Tom Harrison,
Contact ,"The Public's Progress", June 1947, p.xiii.
BOOKLIST
Publications
The First Year's Work ,Mass Observation 1937
Mass Observation Day Survey May 12th 1937, Faber
and Faber London 1987 (1937)
Britain by Mass Observation ,Penguin, Harmondsworth
1939
Contact
, 1947,Saturday
Night by Mass Observation, pp.4-12, illustrations by Gerard
Hoffnung
Contact March 1947, Faith and Fear in Postwar Britain, by
Mass Observation, pp.4-16
Contact March 1948, Don't know Don't Care, by Mass Observation,
pp.56-62.
Contact July 1949, Keeping up with the Jones's, by Mass Observation,
pp.41-45
Mass Observation, The Press and its Readers ,Art
and Technics London 1949
Humphrey Spender, Lensman Photographs 1932-52 Chatto
and Windus London 1987
Humphrey Spender, Worktown Peopl, Falling Wall Press,
1982.
exhibition
catalogue, The Thirties, Hayward Gallery London 1980
The Archives of Mass Observation are in the collection of the University
of Sussex.