Review of Fairy Tales and Photography, or, another look at Cinderella by Jo Spence

Jo SpenceFairy Tales and Photography, or, another look at Cinderella

Jo Spence

Accompanied by Class Slippers by Dr Frances Hatherley, with a preface by Marina Warner.

RRB Photobooks and The Hyman Collection December 2020

Review by Emma Thatcher

How do we take a story like Cinderella out of the archives, off the bookshelves, out of the retail stores and attempt to prise out its latent class content? Its political and social uses?

A new addition to the Feminist Library’s collection is a beautiful facsimile of Jo Spence’s 1982 BA photography thesis in which she analyses gender and class oppression in historic fairy tales.

Jo Spence (1934 -1992) was a British photographic artist and cultural worker. Active during the height of second-wave feminism and self-defining as a ‘cultural sniper’, Spence moved from commercial photography into creating a varied and powerful body of work. Exploring the personal politics of visual language, she challenged the patriarchal narratives implicit in family albums and highlighted the unseen nature of women’s work in the Hackney Flashers collective.

Spence’s personal focus sharpened in her later phototherapy works with Rosy Martin; which explored and reworked significant life episodes. Her final project, a raw documentation of her cancer treatment, made a significant contribution to the patient’s rights movement and highlighted the therapeutic potential of the arts in processing trauma.

This new publication gives an extended insight into Jo Spence’s intellectual interests, created when, as a mature student in the 1980s, she was in the process of solidifying them into her artistic practice.

A large coffee table-sized book, this facsimile version shows the original typewriter written layout and her handwritten markings, alongside her use of chosen imagery.

Spence’s work is stunningly comprehensive for an undergraduate thesis, providing a far-reaching exploration into the history of Cinderella, ‘the most popular story in the world’. She illustrates its impact in all areas of culture and society, looking at advertising, theatre, photography and children’s literature, amongst many others. Starting from Cinderella’s beginnings in 1695, Spence examines its meaning throughout time, and shows how its ‘rags to riches’ story indoctrinates us into ideas of class structures, family life and women’s roles, particularly ‘romantic love as a means of social mobility for girls’.

She critiques its use with searing analysis: ‘dominant ideas about beauty, competition, desire, romantic love, marriage, parents and siblings, and about royalty, do not spring from innate or natural feelings. Such ideas are always historically class-specific and contingent upon the mediation and regulation of knowledge by institutions and apparatuses outside the family.’

As might be expected from a photography thesis, the joy of the publication is the imagery though. From theatre bills to 18th-century woodcuts, Royal wedding imagery to Spence’s own photographic work, the book is packed with reproductions that beautifully illustrate her research and thoughts.

Class Slippers, the accompanying publication, provides insight into the main themes and contextualises the work. ‘Her career’s key concerns jump off the page and the seeds of later work are sown, her previously free-floating discomfort and distrust around societal norms and patterns become crystallised into powerful arguments that go on to mobilise future projects.‘ – Frances Hatherley

Fairy Tales and Photography, or, another look at Cinderella and Class Slippers are both now available to view in the Feminist Library collection. They are also available to buy here from RRB Photo Books RRP £75.

For those who are interested in seeing more of Spence’s work, Bristol’s Arnolfini gallery is currently showing Jo Spence: From Fairy Tales to Phototherapy |Photographs from The Hyman Collection  4 December 2020 – 30 May 2021. NB the exhibition is currently closed due to the Covid-19 situation, reopening 17th May.

There is also an excellent Arena documentary on Spence available on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-4s93Oj9mM and this informative Heni talk by the Feminist Library’s own Patrizia di Bello! https://henitalks.com/talks/jo-spence-cultural-sniper/