30.06. – 01.07.2026 | Talk and workshop
Alexandra Symons-Sutcliffe: PROPERTYLESS SUBJECTS
TALK
This talk introduces the life and work of Terry Dennett (1938–2018), a British photographer, historian, and curator who, with his partner Jo Spence (1934–1992), played a crucial role in the development of socially engaged photography in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s.
Focusing on Dennett’s early practice and the participatory workshop methods he developed to teach children—and sometimes adults—to use photography as a tool for self-education and political expression, the talk traces how he synthesised influences ranging from the Soviet avant-garde and the Weimar-era Worker Photography movement to post-1968 community activism. Situating his work within the social infrastructure of 1970s London, the lecture considers how photography could function as a collective and pedagogical form, shaping later projects concerned with the representation of marginalised social groups.
WORKSHOP
This workshop explores the relationship between Dennett’s pedagogical methodology and photographic practice through materials from his archive. Participants will examine how forms of collective subjectivity emerge across two key projects: his workshops at South Island Place and The Crisis Project (1974–1992), a long-term street photography series documenting urban destitution, homelessness, and shop foreclosures.
These strands of Dennett’s practice are rarely considered together. The workshop proposes a shared concern with subjects positioned outside the normative framework of bourgeois subjectivity: children and the dispossessed. In different ways, both occupy forms of social existence not organised around property ownership and its privileges.
Drawing on archival materials, photographs, research documents, and plans for practical sessions, we will consider how collective subjectivities were represented under the historical conditions in which Dennett worked. Engaging with the material and social dimensions of his practice, participants will use Dennett’s work as a starting point for a conversation about contemporary aesthetic strategies and how we might represent collective life today—our relationships to the city, collaboration, and cohabitation.
BIO
Alexandra Symons-Sutcliffe is a writer, curator, and art historian based in London. Her writing on contemporary art, performance, and documentary has appeared in numerous publications, and she has curated exhibitions and public programmes internationally. She is completing a PhD on British documentary photography at Birkbeck, University of London, where she also teaches.
Talk
30.06.2026 7 pm
Studio Widmann A 2.30