Nick Hedges

Nick Hedges was born in 1943, a decade after such photojournalists and street photographers as Don McCullin and Shirley Baker and a decade before the ‘independents’ such as Martin Parr and Daniel Meadows. This may explain, in part, why he is so often overlooked as he does not fall easily into either of the two most frequently invoked categories of British documentary photographers. 

His wider contribution is also overshadowed by his own early work for the homeless charity Shelter, between 1968-1972. This work remains controversial for a number of reasons, not least for those set out by Jo Spence in her 1976 critique of the ‘Politics of Photography’; namely that such images revictimize, stylise, stereotype and reify the subject, ‘forcing countless euphemisms or the total exclusion of the contradictions of local and central government policies, or the part played by profiteering in the texts accompanying the photographs’ (Spence, 1976 p. 1). 

Whilst Spence’s general argument may contain an element of truth (and her criticisms were made generally, not exclusively in relation to Hedges), there is a case to be made also that without such work, invisible groups such as those living in extreme poverty will remain unseen. Spence’s admirable faith in the spontaneous potential of ‘community photography’ expressed in the same article, remains hypothetical and lacks understanding of realpolitik. 

As Hall (2015) makes clear also, criticism such as Spence’s fails to recognise the ‘potential fissure between authorial intention and semiotic effect’ (Hall, 2015 p 42) in the assessment of a body of work. In the case of Hedges’ photographs for Shelter, subsequent curation and archiving of this work was in the hands of campaigners, marketeers and archivists, each with their own purposes and limitations and each producing differing narratives from that which can be found by looking at the images in their immediate context. As Sonntag has observed, every image “will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it.” (Sontag, 2004 p. 33). A more recent case in point would be Edwards’ account of Steve McCurry’s photograph, ‘Afghan Girl’ (Edwards, 2007). 

As Strauss has said of Sebastião Salgado’s work, Hedges’ Shelter photographs, unlike others which “end at pity or compassion … begin at compassion and lead from there to further recognition.” (2005, p. 48). Similarly, as Strauss noted of Alfredo Jaar’s work on the Rwandan genocide, Hedges’ images, in my view, “work aesthetically, not as propaganda” (2005, p. 102). Indeed, Hedges should be recognised precisely because his images reclaim “craft, care, structure and visual power” for the photographing of those who might otherwise pass unobserved (Linfield, 2010 p. 44).

Below are just a few examples of Hedges’ work for Shelter:

My interest in Hedges is not however in his (in)famous Shelter images but in his use of the built environment to convey not only the lived experience of poverty but also to represent the passing of the material structures through which it was encountered and which once enabled impoverished communities to survive.

the city that was (2012(a)), containing images from 1965-1976, is, in its own words, a ‘celebration’ ‘of aspects of an old working-class culture which was swept aside by the forces of modernity and free market economics’ (p. 4). It is also a moving and troubling exploration of how brutal social democratic politics can be, especially when expressed in terms of benign interventions into working class communities.

In his introduction, Hedges distinguishes between the culture and the environment that sustained it and notes how by the sixties, the haphazard ‘industrial cities’ of the UK, had become ‘tired’ and ‘scarred’ (Hedges 2012(a) p. 4). He observes however the proximity, both spatial and psychological, of home and work – work was somewhere you walked or cycled to. Once this link was broken as jobs went elsewhere and ‘slums’ were cleared, physical gaps opened up in the landscape, acres of semi-derelict wasteland, through which, individuals had to struggle, just as they had to through Robert Adams’ New West. The infrastructure that had supported working class urban communities for over 100 years was systematically destroyed.

For example, at one time, painted advertising was ‘a statement of confidence, of certainty and longevity’, but it  began to appear old-fashioned, even ironic as the corner shops disappeared and the homogeneity of mass retail and consumption moved nearer. The churches, schools and other binding agents of these communities fared no better.

In their place was built a landscape that bears witness to modernist economic ambition, even social reform, but it is clear that the city, as it was, is gone. In ‘new dawn old nightmares’ (2012(b)) Hedges shows how on the ruins of the old city, a form of dystopia was built where houses came second to roads; where homes look like prisons, connected by exposed walkways and dangerous underpasses; where families are stacked on top of one another and the life is squeezed out of any possibility of community and the unity of class is frustrated at every turn.

Hedges’ analysis of the redevelopment of the 1960s and 1970s is politically driven. He describes the process as one of a betrayal of the working class by the ‘educated professional class’ (Hedges, 2012(b) p. 3). His work describes not only the depoliticization of work through its sequestration but also prepares the ground for the pathologizing of poverty as a condition not of the organisation of society but the failings of individuals, families and class. In 2019, Spence’s criticism of Hedges seems even more to miss the point.

In truth, the strength of Hedges’ images of the ‘city that was’ and ‘new dawn old nightmares’ are the affectionate, humorous and tender photographs of children playing; men and women at work, at play and at prayer. These images demonstrate the resilience of the communities that ‘redevelopment’ tore up and moved on in a way that is tender to the point of being painful but which was no match for the bulldozer and wrecking ball. 

These images show what was lost.

His landscape work and his photographs of buildings, in all their bleakness and desolation, depopulated and quiet, are images of what followed.

References

Edwards, H. (2007) ‘Cover to Cover: The Life Cycle of an Image in Contemporary Visual Culture’ in in Reinhardt, M., Edwards, H. and Dugganne, E. Beautiful suffering: photography and the traffic in pain. Williamstown, MA: Williams College Museum of Art, pp. 75-92

Hall, A. (2015) Nick Hedges, the Representation of the Homeless Child and a Photographic Archive. Doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham. Access: http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/6534/

Hedges, N. (2012a) city that was – photographs 1965-1976, Blurb Books. https://www.blurb.co.uk

Hedges, N. (2012b) new dreams old nightmares – photographs 1968-1998, Blurb Books. https://www.blurb.co.uk

Linfield, S. (2010) The cruel radiance : photography and political violence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sontag, S. (2004) Regarding the pain of others. London: Penguin.

Strauss, D. L. and Berger, J. (2012) Between the eyes: essays on photography and politics. [Reprint] edn. New York, NY: Aperture.