This essay, published in a Festschrift for Alex Potts, investigates the role of documentary photography in the radical aesthetics of the 1970s. I argue that the Brecht-Benjamin line should not be seen simply as a matter of... more
This essay, published in a Festschrift for Alex Potts, investigates the role of documentary photography in the radical aesthetics of the 1970s. I argue that the Brecht-Benjamin line should not be seen simply as a matter of representation, but must include the transformation of production relations. The range of practices current in Britain at the time included both perspectives, but a range of organisations, groups and individuals paid serious attention to creating, what Alan Sears calls an 'infrastructure of dissent'. The essay includes research conducted in the Jo Spence Archive at Birkbeck. Incidentally the phrase 'dirty realism' as adapted from Enzensberger's 'dirty media'.
