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Jo Spence was a British photographer, writer, healthcare activist, and phototherapist. For nearly two decades, Spence collaborated with Terry Dennett in co-founding Photography Workshop Ltd. and producing numerous projects including "Remodelling Photo History" (1982), "Remodelling Medical History" (1982-89), and "The Crisis Project" (1982-92). In a recent exhibition, Dennett, who now serves as the curator of the Jo Spence Memorial Archive, presented their rarely viewed collaborative work from "The Final Project" (1991-92), a photographic exploration of mortality during Spence's last years with leukemia.
TINA TAKBMOTO: Can you begin by describing when and how you met Jo Spence?
TIRRY DINNITT: I met Jo by chance in 1973. My day job was in scientific photography but in my spare time I was doing community and street photography. In 1970, I began teaching children's photography at the South Island Workshop. One year I thought, why not go round and see all of the children's workshops in London? During my visit to the Children's Rights Workshop, I met Jo. We got talking and couldn't stop and moved in together a month later. It was one of those decisive moments that change people's lives. It starts with an idea like seeing all the children's workshops. If I hadn't had that thought, I wouldn't have met Jo. It was more fateful because Jo wasn't usually scheduled to work on the day I visited. We thought about this as a meaningful coincidence. Thereafter, we always tried to look for key moments in our projects that might lead to similar cascade effects.
TT: When did you start working together, and what was the dynamic of your collaboration? Did each of you have specific roles and strengths?
TD: From the moment we met, we began to teach, research, and make documentary photography together. In addition to co-founding Photography Workshop Ltd., we also published texts including the journal Photography/Politics.' Our dynamic sprung from our political commitment and shared interest in social radicalism. We worked together and separately, according to the demands of each project. Jo was the skilled writer and typist; I was the skilled photo technician. Part of this division of labor was based upon the fact that my day job was as head of photography in a scientific research institution with access to professional...