Photograph, Community Disco, West Belfast, Survival Programmes, Chris Steele-Perkins, 1978

Black and white photograph of children dancing at a crowded disco.

Given by Chris Steele-Perkins

The photograph is from the 'Survival Programmes' project, a social enquiry into Britain's inner cities by Chris Steele-Perkins, Paul Trevor and NIcholas Battye, working as the Exit Photography Group, between 1974 and 1979. The project was self-consciously following the tradition of pioneering studies into poverty (including those by Engels, Booth and Rowntree) and photographers who have 'documented vividly and with compassion the less aceeptable faces of capitalism' (ie Thompson, Brandt, Hardy, McCullin). However, it dealt wtih a 'specific and significant historical moment' - that of an emerging post-industrial society at a period of a perceived crisis in inner cities.

30 years after taking this series of photographs of Belfast, Chris Steele-Perkins returned to the city to rephotograph and interview a number of people he had photographed in 1978, making a series of 'Belfast Pairs'. One of the people he rephotographed was the girl jumping the highest in the disco. A copy of the pair is on the artist's file.

Also entitled 'Marathon Disco, Turf Lodge, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1978' (caption used in Survival Programmes book; the artist is happy with either title).

The photograph is from the 'Survival Programmes' project, a social enquiry into Britain's inner cities by Chris Steele-Perkins, Paul Trevor and Nicholas Battye, working as the Exit Photography Group, between 1974 and 1979. The group self-consciously followed the tradition of pioneering studies into poverty by sociologists and documentary photographers, gathering thousands of photographs and over a hundred hours of interviews. As part of this project, Chris Steele-Perkins took a series of photographs in Belfast during the Troubles. Turf Lodge, where this photograph was taken, is a Catholic area of West Belfast.

E.513-2008