Jo Spence en la Documenta12

Jo Spence

*1934 in London (UK), died 1992 in London (UK)

Exhibitions: MACBA – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2005 (ES); Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, 2005 (UK)

General Introduction

Jo Spence intensively examined the question of construction and representation of sexual and social identities; in this context, she made photography a means for rebellion and therapy. She researched the political in her biography as well as of her social surrounding and explored processes of becoming a subject. Political transformation is only possible on the basis of a transformed subjectivity. The Personal is Political, this was the major catchword of the women’s movement. It

is evident, she writes, “that part of my identity has been formed from within a specific set of cultural debates and clashes in relation to visual representation, which embrace feminism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis.”

Spence intended to comprehend, which structures and relations the human being embodies, and wanted to encourage everybody to speak for themselves. Courageously, she gave an example as to how not to evade the questions to the individual self, and she explored the process of, “how I came to be formed psychically, how my subjectivity came into being, and how I had negotiated in the world to survive.” This was combined with a critical redefinition of documentary photography as a political instrument for self-representation – and for visualizing cultural and economic suppression, sexual harassment, racial discrimination and power struggles within the family. In her dramatic performances for the camera – some kind of photo-theatre – and the photo therapy developed by her, she was inspired by Berthold Brecht, and thus employed the scope of epic theatre.

Feelings were translated into thought and questions and were analysed. She understood her performances as “educational entertainment”. Spence experimented with visual, theoretical, educational, collaborative and political practices.

”As a practicing photographer and writer in the field of education, of course I have some power, even though I am often taking a critical stance and feel very vulnerable, ignored, and powerless for doing so. But I also speak as somebody who for many years has earned very little and who is ill, and in these other aspects of my life I have less power.”

Documenta 12 Works

Remodelling Photo History (1982) makes the daily, institutionalized and normalized practices and codes seem strange, by taking them out of their seemingly natural context. Bodies appear on the pictorial surface, which should not appear there in this form. The cooperation between Jo Spence and Terry Dennett questions the historical and contemporary genres of photography and how the female body is depicted. The photo series is structured into visual chapters like Industrialization, Colonization, Regulation, Victimization, Realization and Revisualization. Documentary photography, portrait-, still life-, fashion or nude photography as well as the different modes of employment in art, media, social institutions and medicine are revealed. In addition, Spence and Dennett re-examine and work on the relationship of the model – of the photographed object –to the photographer. This is connected with the acquisition and refusal of dominating structures, places, stories and cultural norms. At stake are the social and cultural-political constructions of femininity, family relations, the position in a hierarchic class society and problems of history.

The group of works The Picture of Health was created 1982–1986 in cooperation with Rosy Martin, Maggie Murray and Terry Dennett. In this series, Spence thematizes very offensively her illness, breast cancer. She does not show her naked body any longer, however, in order to state “something about the history of the nude”, but she documents the history of her own illness. The series contains both: Spence criticizes the social treatment of illness and draws the individual self into the focus of attention. In this way, she has defended herself against the “minefield of silence“ and against the loss of power of the ill individual. There is hardly anything throwing us as much back on mere life as illness. Spence learned about the individual situation as a powerless patient, as well as “about the

essence of the political power of the medical profession. I then needed to seek for other ways of representing that reality which, eventually, involved the staging of personal tableaux for the camera.” Her works show her struggle for survival – also through alternative healing methods of traditional Chinese medicine –, no matter, how wounded and hurt her body is. Besides this, the hospital world is depicted from the perspective of the patient and newspaper clippings are spread among the numerous photographs. Single words are also written onto the body and raise the question: how do you take responsibility for your body? Is she now “heroine or victim?”

Fuente: Documenta12