Reconsidering Amateur Photography

This series of commissioned essays, co-edited with Juliet Baillie and funded by the National Media Museum, brought together a range of scholars and practitioners for a series of essays, slideshows, response pieces and a round table discussion on the subject of amateur photography. Built on an acknowledgment that the area has been inadequately studied to date, and that gaps in scholarship needed addressing, historians, sociologists, picture editors and photographers produced a range of original research and position pieces to examine particular practices, from camera clubs and tourist photography to magazines for enthusiasts and photographic education. With contributions from (amongst others) Professors Elizabeth Edwards, Martha Langford, Peter Buse and Sarah Kember alongside Roger Tooth from The Guardian and celebrated illustrator and author Graham Rawle, the twenty commissioned pieces developed much-needed debate on an overlooked area. As one strand of the larger EitherAnd photography resource, the site was listed in the Top Ten Photography Blogs of 2013 by The Photographers' Gallery, London.