Return Journey - ACE112.2

Humphrey Spender in his workroom, Derek Smith on a ferry, Jimmy Forsyth in his kitchen. Commentary: "Three photographers. One travelled north in the 1930s. One travelled south in the 1970s. One has stayed in the north all his life." Three photographs. Commentary: "Three sets of photographs. Three stories of the industrial north. What are the links between them?" Photographic exhibition. Commentary: "And why, after years in obscurity, have two sets of photographs recently had their first public showing?" Early 20th century footage of children in street jostling each other to look at the camera filming them. Commentary: "In the early of this century, there existed in northern England a race of people unknown to those in the south. It’s difficult to realise that, prior to the documentary movement of the 1930s, there were very few images of these people." Photograph of anthropologist, Tom Harrisson, with Borneo villager. Commentary says that they knew more about Bolton (the city that supplied their cloth) than Harrisson did and he decided to go to live in the town. Derelict house in Davenport Street; surrounding area. Some of the photographs, part of "a unique social experiment" in which were recorded, "in painstaking detail, the rituals and behaviour of these exotic and unknown peoples in our own country", which grew into the Mass-Observation (MO) project. Humphrey Spender, the MO photographer, at his studio in Chelmsford. Commentary explains that Spender and his brother, Stephen, were among the "young, upper middle class intellectuals who saw the need to redress the balance between the leaders of society and the led." Spender talks about his politics and activism.