As part of the Hyman Collection's commitment to making the collection and archive as visible and accessible as possible, we are delighted to have worked with the publisher Museums etc. on a new book on Jo Spence and Terry Dennett's extensive collaborative project documenting the lives of the travelling communities of London and the South East. The Hyman Collection holds the entire archive of Spence and Dennett's gypsies and travellers work which is presented here in depth for the first time. The book includes new essays and never previously published photographs.
This is the second book that we have worked on that makes accesible works by Jo Spence from the Hyman Collection and follows the publication of Fairy Tales and Photography, or, Another look at Cinderella in 2020.
PRESS RELEASE
There are some books you open and immediately feel their force. This is one of them.
In 1974, Jo Spence and her partner Terry Dennett began visiting ‘illegal’ Gypsy and Traveller sites in and around London. They returned repeatedly, getting to know the people living there and photographing their lives over time.
Their work was never fully shown or published.
Our Studio Was the World brings this work together for the first time: over 280 photographs, newly scanned from original contact sheets, prints and texts, alongside previously unpublished material.The photographs are direct, intimate and often unexpected — unstaged and close.
Together, Jo Spence and Terry Dennett were central to the debates that reshaped photography in the 1970s and 80s — across practice, theory, politics and feminism. And their work continues to influence socially engaged photography today, remaining powerful and urgent.
As the book’s Postscript explains, Gypsies and Travellers continue to be socially marginalised, over-policed and discriminated against. But the impact of this book lies in the photographs themselves. And Dennett’s previously unseen texts act as a mini manifesto for activist photographers.
Our Studio Was the World is available now, for immediate delivery worldwide.
