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Cadence Kinsey

Chelsea Collison

Inderbir Bhullar

October 25th, 2024

Exposure and Contrast: The Exit Photography Group at LSE Library

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Cadence Kinsey

Chelsea Collison

Inderbir Bhullar

October 25th, 2024

Exposure and Contrast: The Exit Photography Group at LSE Library

0 comments | 2 shares

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Exposure and Contrast: The Exit Photography Group is an exhibition at LSE Library derived from a collection of photographs and interviews held in the archives. The Exit group formed in the 1970s to document the changes and challenges impacting Britain’s inner cities. Below, curators Indy Bhullar, Chelsea Collison and Cadence Kinsey choose and reflect on six stand-out items from the exhibition.

Exposure and contrast: the Exit photography group is showing at LSE Library from 23 September 2024 to 31 January 2025.


Down Wapping [1974]

The exhibition begins by setting the social and political scene in which the Exit Photography Group was formed and which influenced their work. Reports from the 1960s and 70s described the growing crises of poverty in Britain’s inner cities, despite the post-war welfare provisions. A small black and white book of photographs features in this introductory story. Titled Down Wapping, the focus of its cover photograph is a smiling group of people congregated at an open window. The people were residents in Wapping, east London at a time when the docks, which had driven so much of the economic and social life in that place, were falling derelict. The wharves and warehouses which lined Wapping’s streets, and which had once stored Britain’s imperial haul were emptying and the remaining community were mostly all soon to be gone, replaced by the reconfigured Docklands.

– Indy Bhullar

Down Wapping


Brick Lane pictures

Following Down Wapping, Exit shifted focus to a new project which would be called Survival Programmes. The three members responsible for creating Survival were Nicholas Battye, Chris Steele-Perkins and Paul Trevor. Nicholas worked as a security guard at the offices of the Gulbenkian Foundation, a philanthropic enterprise. Late one evening he bumped into Peter Brinson, the Gulbenkian’s UK Director. They discussed Down Wapping and Peter encouraged an application to the Foundation for a more ambitious project focused on a greater number of UK cities. Their successful bid resulted in a £5500 award in 1974, intended to cover Exit’s costs for six months; the project took considerably longer! In 1977 they began editing the thousands of images and hours of recorded interviews they had collected. At the time, Paul Trevor lived in a flat off Brick Lane which was a makeshift base for the Group. On discovering the flat above was no longer squatted, they decided to squat it themselves. The new space allowed them to spread out the material and organise it for publication which eventually happened in 1982.

– Indy BhullarNicholas Battye, Chris Steele-Perkins and Paul Trevor (1)


Ronald Blythe Letter [1981]

Proof copies of Survival Programmes were sent to various people who the Group thought might take an interest in it. This effusive letter was a response to that mailout sent from the author and essayist Ronald Blythe to Chris Steele-Perkins. Blythe was chosen because his 1969 book Akenfield was a particular favourite of Nicholas Battye. Akenfield was based on the experiences of Blythe, evoking his years growing up in a small Suffolk village but also included the contemporary perspective of the rural community. His portrayals of fictional lives in a fictional village were nevertheless based on his own careful research, interviewing people about ways of life that were disappearing. Exit’s photographs seemed to capture something similar for Blythe, providing intimate yet fleeting glimpses into the lives of their subjects as they traversed the ongoing challenges brought about by social, economic and political change.

– Indy Bhullar


survival programmes cover

Survival Programmes book [1982]

The book, Survival Programmes, contains visual and verbal narratives of families and individuals living in the UK’s largest cities in the mid to late 1970s. The emotive images provide the observer with a glimpse into the daily lives, fates, and hopes of those living in poverty and those reacting against it.

The first three chapters titled “Hope,” “Promise” and “Welfare,” interlaced and depicted dignity, beauty and joy amongst the squalor and despair also present in those places. In contrast, the last chapter, “Reaction,” included photos of strikes, riots, and anti-fascist rallies showing the direct action taken against racism, colonialism, and capitalism.

The photos from the book on display in the exhibition are a cross-section of each chapter and region.

– Chelsea Collison


Beyond Poor Images. Visitor Book [1984/85]

This was a particularly shocking and sad item that we came across in the archives. It is a comments book that accompanied Beyond Poor Images, an open-call exhibition organised by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) to “confront popular myths about poverty and the poor in Britain today”. Featured in the exhibition were posters designed by “artists, students, pensioners, prisoners”, many of whom drew on their own experiences as one of the 15 million people at the time living in poverty or on its margins. The comments book travelled with the exhibition to libraries and community centres across the UK. Alongside expressions of sympathy and solidarity, and tragic accounts of individual suffering, many visitors also recorded comments that replayed the very myths the exhibition was trying to challenge: “Poverty and ignorance go hand in hand”, “State benefits are too high”, and “Poverty is no trap!” Unfortunately, such ideas remain prevalent today.

– Cadence Kinsey


Without our consent. Poster, Action for Benefits campaign [1986]

Although images had long served as a campaigning tool within the wider fight for social justice, the mid-1980s saw an explosion in the visual materials produced by campaign groups in the UK dedicated to the eradication of poverty. This coincided with Margaret Thatcher’s re-election in 1983, following extensive reforms and cuts to the social security system described as the most radical reform to the welfare state since the Beveridge Report in 1942, and famously culminating in a record 3.1 million people unemployed by 1986 (10.6 per cent of the workforce). This poster marks the end point in a years-long campaign by Action for Benefits, a coalition formed by members of the Civil Service, CPAG, and other organisations. Drawing on the well-established tradition of satirical political cartoons, the poster contrasts the Queen and a single mother to show how the cuts disproportionally affected those most in need: an approach repeated by government administrations ever since.

– Cadence Kinsey


Note: This article gives the views of the authors and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image credits: LSE Library

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About the author

Cadence Kinsey

Cadence Kinsey is Professor of Contemporary Art and Global and Social Challenges at the University of Utrecht. Her research focuses on how inequality is represented in art and visual culture. Previously, she was Associate Professor at UCL and has published on digital technologies and emerging artists. Her first book, Walled Gardens, was published by OUP in 2021.

Chelsea Collison

Chelsea Collison is the Learning and Engagement Officer for LSE Library. She has a BA degree in Anthropology from the University of Florida and an MA degree in Museum Studies from Johns Hopkins University. Her education and interests have led her to a career working in outreach and engagement for museums, parks, and now, LSE Library!

Inderbir Bhullar

Inderbir Bhullar is the Curator for Economics and Social Policy at LSE Library. He joined the Library in 2013, previously working as a librarian at The Women’s Library. He curates exhibitions, writes blogs, gives talks and connects collections with academics, students, and the public alike.

Posted In: Art, Lit and Film | Britain and Ireland | British Politics | LSE Event | Media Studies | Urban Studies

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