In the social sciences, one commonly used approach to the analysis of qualitative data is known as ‘grounded theory’. This approach, developed in the late 1960s at the University of California by two sociologists, Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, works inductively from social data to construct a model or theory to explain the fundamental social processes that originate the data. The application of grounded theory is usually characterised by the generation of abstract categories around which the data aggregate. In formal social science research, these categories can be refined in a variety of ways, including re-sampling and reiterative analysis before they are integrated into a broader, explanatory, theoretical framework. In a general sense, it can be seen as the antithesis of the hypothetico-deductive model of scientific inquiry whereby a concept, idea or theory is ‘tested’ against data collected specifically to either confirm or refute the initial hypothesis.
Surprisingly, the use of visual data in the development of research methodologies rooted in constructivist approaches to the social sciences, including grounded theory approaches, has been slow to develop although it is now a fertile ground for qualitative researchers (see Mey and Dietrich, 2016). Not least for technical reasons, the use of visual data in the empirical social sciences remains however, a highly elusive and contested area and is beyond the scope of my current interest.
In my former career as a researcher, I used grounded theory extensively and I retain the occupational habit, if somewhat simplistically, of applying a form of ‘grounded theory lite’ when reviewing my photographs. This, in reality, is little more than a word association game but I find it useful to record my reaction to an image in a few words and to see what images attract the same reaction before seeing how these images relate to one another and then to other photographs sorted in the same way.
In looking at the early generation of images taken for this project, a number of common terms emerged for me. These included:
- anonymous/ secret;
- threat/ security;
- impersonal/ humanised;
- ugly;
- impermanence/ decay;
- natural/ manmade.
These are nothing more than ill-defined terms around which to organise my thinking but they could be developed, in the manner of grounded theory, to construct the essentials of the narrative that links the images with the central idea for the project – what the buildings on the Westbury Trading Estate have to say about the work that takes place there.
For example, a number of the buildings that I have photographed seem wilfully ugly; designed to be as unappealing as possible:
Some appear intended to offer the maximum aesthetic offence:
We usually only invest in the appearance of buildings where we value the building or the purposes that put it there. It is easy to infer from these images that such buildings have no value at all beyond the functionally necessary and that this signals how we are to value the work that goes on inside them.
Some buildings seem to express their functionality perfectly, with not even the slightest concession to refinement or anything approaching style:
Other buildings, equally apparently functional, seem designed to frustrate any understanding of what they are for or what goes on inside them.
There is one enormous ‘shed’ on the Estate that is as impenetrable as one of Arthur C. Clarke’s monoliths in a Space Odyssey, which it oddly resembles. It exudes the same unnamed threat too as it is surrounded by security fencing and skimpily planted woodland:
Security is strongly in evidence throughout the Estate. It is no doubt intended to keep people out but, as with all security measures, they work to keep people in too. Where buildings give no clue to their purpose but that purpose needs to be secured in some way, it raises questions about the nature of the work that is done inside them. Whereas in the past, a factory or a workshop might be designed to draw in the curious observer, not least to display the wares or to promote the name of the manufacturer, these buildings appear to want to keep all prying eyes away. Maybe there is something to hide as well as something to protect behind the security apparatus, especially when even a dairy is protected by checkpoints such as this:
The natural landscape has also been put safely behind a security fence and often brutalised and made ugly:
Despite the apparent robustness of the security apparatus, the buildings tell a story about their essentially temporary nature and, by implication, the precariousness of the work and the jobs on the Estate:
Even where there is continued occupation, there is also evidence of decay:
The transience of employers and the precariousness of employment are two of the defining characteristics of the labour market under late capitalism.
Another is the lack of commitment to the development of the human capital required to ensure production. The status of the investment in skills needed to maintain the workforce is demonstrated by this shed in a rainswept yard. This might once have been a technical college or college of FE, built with all the civic pride it could muster:
The global reach and lack of commitment to any given community is also a defining characteristic of contemporary capitalist production and where architecture sometimes expresses a particular vernacular or at least a sense of a specific locality or geography, any sense of this is absent on the Estate. These buildings and the means that serve them could really be anywhere in the UK or indeed, anywhere on earth, as indeed, next month, they might be:
Security, anonymity, functionality, transience, ugliness and a wilful disregard for anything that speaks to the human or the natural define both the Estate and the conditions in which labour operates in the early part of the 21stCentury.
The soullessness of the Estate is even more pronounced at night where the empty offices and yards emphasise the loneliness of the night shift:
But the security continues, unblinkingly, the gas pump shouldering arms:
Against whatever might be lurking in the shadows:
However, the will to humanise the landscape and the conditions of labour are also evident on the Estate. Space can be found for somewhere to sit outside of the workplace (even if it is amongst the rubbish bags), for flowers to be planted (although still under surveillance) and a welcome to be attempted (between the concrete barriers):
There is a limit though and the Estate Café’s attempt to soften its edges achieves only limited success:
Even the intrusion of nature in its spring blossom accentuates rather than relieves the oppressive nature of the engineered environment:
And the bushes have barbs:
I shot as many of my images in the same flat a light as I could, even though the clouds do add something to the mood and, in some cases, to the composition. I framed almost all of my shots in much the same way too, front on with road and building. This has produced a number of images with very strong horizontals that reflect the alternately bland and brutal facades of the buildings. Variations from this approach (e.g. the usual ‘landscape oblique’) only reinforce the dominance of the front-on, naked-eye stare that I wanted to achieve.
There is evidence amongst the images of the indomitability of the human spirit to make a home, even in the least promising of circumstances and I suspect that Robert Adams would recognise the attempts to blunt the edges of the workplace made by the workers on the Estate. Perhaps though both he and I are guilty of, in Susie Linfield’s words, “finding beauty in all the wrong places” (Linfield, 2010 p. 43) or at least of finding consolation. I will consider the aestheticizing effects of photography is having on this project at a later point but I am aware of how the framing and the lighting have, either as cause of effect, contributed to the overall narrative.
Conclusion …
To judge by appearances, the work that takes place on the Estate shares many of the characteristics of the trade in labour under late capitalism. Only what is needed is there – there is no artifice nor ornament; no investment in the human. What is there is passing, either secretly or, at best, anonymously. What is there is protected against whatever risk is assumed to exist either from without or from within. Work is nondescript and unvalued, except in economic terms. Nature is cropped and managed and unable to grow other than as the Estate keepers determine. The human spirit is only weakly present but then, it is only required by the hour …
References
Glaser, B.G. and Strauss, A.L. (1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago: Aldine Publishing (Observations).
Linfield, S.(2010) The cruel radiance: photography and political violence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mey, G. and Dietrich, M. ‘From Text to Image—Shaping a Visual Grounded Theory Methodology.’ Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, [S.l.], V. 17, N. 2, Apr. 2016
