Cultural Sniping brings together a wide range of Jo Spence’s photographs and writings for the first time. Her work is characterized by its challenging and oppositional stance, coloured by a spirit of exploration and playfulness. this invigorating combination is reflected in the images and texts in this book, which tackle complex issues of gender, class, health and the body, and their impact on her understanding of personal history and the construction of identity. Cultural Sniping includes images from Spence’s early work in documentary photography and from her pioneering photo-therapy projects, explored in collaboration with other photographers. It reproduces work from her Return to Nature and Death Mask series, in which she tries to come to terms withthe reality of death. Jo Spence’s commitment to engaging with personal experience, political understanding and critical theory make her writing and photography a vital contribution to our understanding of the politics of representation. Jo Spence was one of Britain’s pioneering photographers. Born in Wembley of working-class parents, she worked for many years as a studio photographer. Her political concerns led her to documentary photography and she was a founder member of the Photography Workshop. Her life changed at 46 when she began a degree at the Polytechnic of Central London in the theory and practice of photography, and with the discovery of her breast cancer. Despite this, and through her struggle to find ways to tackle cancer and to share the experience with others, she developed new ways of using photography and new ways of living that affected her critical approach to a range of photographic projects. Jo Spence published and exhibited widely during her career, and her radical and innovative work has influenced a generation of practitioners and students of photography.
