Camerawork and the Directory of British Photographic Collections from the John Wall Archive.
Presentation by Robin Christian.
The Camerawork collections (c.1972-1999) tell a fascinating and largely untold story of community-led photography in England during the 70s, 80s and 90s.
The collections’ unique contents cover setting up the Half Moon Photography Workshop, a community-based photography workshop in East London, through to Camerawork’s extensive publishing and touring exhibition programme.
The Rev. Dr. John Wall was a leading member of a Royal Photographic Society (RPS) group, which proposed the making of a National Photographic Archive. In 1972, the group recommended the compilation of a National Photographic Record, of which John Wall became honorary Editor.
The Directory of British Photographic Collections was published by the RPS in 1972. The Photography and Archive Research Centre (PARC) acquired the John Wall archive when researcher Bob Pullen visited Wall, in the early stages of making a web-based Directory of Photographic Collections in the United Kingdom.
The first iteration for the John Wall project was a joint presentation between Val Williams and Robin Christian at the Archives 2.0 Conference at the National Media Museum in Bradford (2014).