The Work Which Is Not One

Abstract

Through the collaborative practice of British socialist-feminist photographer Jo Spence (1934–1992) and the contents of her memorial archive, this chapter explores what is at stake when political, future-oriented work is institutionalized. It begins by analysing how art-market and museum economies mute Spence’s polemic and the ways in which archival theory and practice must be recast to amplify it as a basic tenet of archival stewardship. The chapter then elucidates the pressures on Spence’s collaborative work as it became entangled with the individualistic mechanisms of capitalism, art markets and copyright law. After examining the archive’s conceptualization of photography as inherently collaborative, and its commitment to operating in ways consonant with the political aims of the work, the chapter traces the tensions over ownership of the phototherapy work Spence made with Rosy Martin. Focusing on the mutuality of their collaboration beyond posing and operating the camera, the chapter proposes we conceptualise it through the co-counselling principles used in their phototherapy, and the organizational principles of Libreria delle Donne in Milan, Italy (1975–), rather than notions of artistic attribution. Doing so illuminates the importance of archivists and historians in keeping the dynamics of past collaborative practices alive for the present and the future.