Jo Spence
Jo Spence was a British photographer, writer, cultural worker, and photography-based therapist. Beginning career as a commercial photographer, Spence quickly shifted her practice in the 1970s to produce documentary photography with socialist and feminist themes. As a member of the Hackney Flashers photography collective (1974–80), and the Photography Workshop established in collaboration with Terry Dennett in 1974, Spence made visible the invisible aspects of working-class communities and women’s lives through photomontage, skills-sharing workshops, and social documentary photography.
In 1982, Spence was diagnosed with breast cancer. Abandoning her social documentary practice, Spence turned the camera onto herself and began to document her subsequent battle with the disease through photographic self-portraiture. ‘The Picture of Health?’ (1982–1986) series subverts idealised images of the female body while constituting a tool —‘phototherapy’ that she co-developed with Rosy Martin — to come to terms with and regain control of the body in response to the accepted authority of modern medicine. In both these capacities, the traditional photographer/subject relationship is disrupted through photography. Spence continued to document her illness until she died of leukemia in 1992, culminating in ‘The Final Project’ (1991–92) series.
Further Reading
Lee, Louisa (ed.). Jo Spence: the Final Project. London: Ridinghouse, 2013.
Spence, Jo. Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal and Photographic Autobiography. London: Camden, 1986.
Spence, Jo and Annette Kuhn. Cultural Sniping: The Art of Transgression. London: Routledge, 1995.
Selected Collections
Arts Council Collection
Tate
Wellcome Trust
