(W)Archives: Archival Imaginaries, War and Contemporary Art

also contributed to the journal’s end in 1986. Interestingly, Stacey concludes the chapter with a brief meditation on a methodological problem likely familiar to scholars working with oral histories. Of the conflicting accounts of this period generated by the participants themselves, Stacey writes, ‘The level of engagement needed to secure the contemporary testimonies of those mentioned here is a metaphor for dashed hopes in HMPW and Camerawork’. While the triumphs and accomplishments of these groups were many, the conflicts between participants themselves, it would seem, had lasting effects. Near the book’s beginning, Stacey offers her more academically minded readers a note of caution. Some of the elements one might expect of a typical academic publication, such as literature reviews that situate an author’s particular scholarly intervention within extended theoretical discussions, are in general not present in Photography of Protest and Community. This is intended, Stacey alerts us, to make the text more accessible to those outside the academy, perhaps engaged in social and political struggle of their own. The gesture can be viewed as a self-conscious echo of Camerawork’s founding question, ‘Who is it for?’ At the same time, I found myself wishing at moments for at least some of the more analytical and theoretical synthesis that might help underscore the historical significance of the archival record Stacey so diligently recreates. Among the well-trodden political debates surrounding documentary, photojournalism and the mass media, ‘community photography’ has remained an overlooked and undertheorised subject. Stacey corrects this oversight with an intervention that is sure to be an indispensable resource for scholars in this area. Beyond this, I share Stacey’s hope that this text might serve as an historical resource for current-day activist photographers engaged in local political struggles for freedom and liberation, for in such struggles we must draw strength from wherever we may find it.