The Mass Observation Project was an organisation founded in Britain in the 1930s. It’s aim was to record the everyday lives of the British people. This information was gathered by British citizens who would report on not only their own day-to-day lives, but those of their neighbours and others in their community. Particular attention was paid to public events such as sports matches where people were gathered together and behaviour could be observed en masse, but also trivial detail such as the price of fish and chips and the which end of a cigarette people tapped before they lit it. The three men who started the project were Charles Madge, a poet and journalist, Humphrey Jennings, an artist and filmmaker; and Tom Harrisson, an anthropologist. Their differing interests meant the project never had a clear objective since it was pulled in three different directions by those who founded it and they were constantly in disagreement about what the aims of the project were.








Obviously the project was met with criticism from those who felt that it was invasive to have people reporting on their neighbours, and obviously during WWII anybody who was thought to be spying on other people would have been treated with great suspicion and hostility. But the project never had any intention to victimise or single out anybody. In fact, with the huge volume of information they were receiving from their hundreds of volunteers, it would have been almost impossible to distinguish one person from the next, it was virtually anonymous.

The reason that I have decided to write about the Mass Observation Project here is that it occurred to me fairly early on that the photographs I was receiving were more-or-less an unbiased collection of materials relating to everyday life. These films obviously weren’t shot with this project in mind and thus they are an unprejudiced snapshot of aspects of the subjects’ lives. You could draw parallels easily with the types of images produced by the Mass Observation Project and the ones I have discovered through this project.








Obviously the differences between the two projects lie in their intentions. I have never approached this project from an anthropological point of view, neither am I attempting to produce an archive of the everyday. Not only is that not my interest, but the Mass Observation Project did (and still does) this to such a great extent that any effort I made would pale in comparison. My interest lies in the types of images that people ‘forgot’ about, that were never developed.

The Mass Observation Project was revived in 1981 and has carried on ever since, it’s current online home is at the Sussex University, details of it can be found here

There is also a very detailed in interesting article about the history of the project and it’s founders at the The New Yorker

Discussion is welcome in the comments!