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Jo Spence
(1934-92)
1990
Colour print, 409 x 285mm (1618 x 1114")
National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG P849)
Born Joan Patricia Clode to working-class
parents in London, Jo Spence left school for secretarial college
aged thirteen. She started work when she was fifteen and from
1951
to 1962 was secretary at a commercial photography studio in Finchley
Road. This led her to join the Hampstead Camera Club. After a
short-lived marriage in 1965, she went to Ireland with Neil Spence,
whose name she adopted, and on her return she set up a studio
in Hampstead, Joanna Spence Associates, which specialised in
portraiture, weddings and actors' portfolios. In 1972 Spence
helped set up the Children's Rights Workshop and with an Arts
Council grant produced her exhibition Children Photographed.
In 1974 she met the photographer and alternative educationalist
Terry Dennett (b.1938), and together they set up the independent
teaching organisation Photography Workshop Ltd (1974-92),
which was responsible for helping to initiate a number of projects
including the Hackney Flashers Women's Photography Group that
created two important photo-projects, 'Women and Work' and 'Who's
Holding the Baby?' In 1979 she participated in the Hayward Gallery
exhibition Three Perspectives on Photography. In 1982, with Dennett,
she produced Remodelling Photo History. That same year she gained
First Class Honours in the Theory and Practice of Photography
at the Polytechnic of Central London, and in November was diagnosed
with breast cancer. This crisis provoked Spence to develop her
own self-medication, which included the use of photography as
a therapeutic alternative to drugs. From 1983 she collaborated
with the photographer Rosy Martin (b.1946), and together they
coined the term 'phototherapy'. Spence's auto-biography, Putting
Myself in the Picture (1986), describes phototherapy as meaning
'quite literally, using photography to heal ourselves'. Her final
book, Cultural Sniping: The Art of Transgression, was edited
and published posthumously in 1995. Her work is now held in the
Jo Spence Memorial Archive, London.
Spence went on to collaborate with various people including her
partner David Roberts, whom she later married. This portrait
emerged from a 1989 phototherapy session with Dr Tim Sheard from
the Bristol Cancer Help Centre. It was originally the central
image in a triptych used for the poster that advertised the exhibition
Missing Persons/Damaged Lives at Leeds City Art Gallery in 1991.
In the photograph Spence confronts us, appearing grotesque, her
face behind a hag-like mask. Armed with a dagger and a shield,
she is both scary and comic. The inclusion of an assortment of
chocolates undercuts a more sombre interpretation of the work
and refers to eating obsessions. 'She challenged the myth of
the body beautiful, while acknowledging its power. Admitting
her terror, she confronted the phantasmagoria of disease.' (Obituary,
Independent, 25 June 1992.)
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