Race, Prostitution and the New Left

The Postwar Inner City through Janet Mendelsohn's 'Social Eye

Bibliographic Data

ID4493880
AuthorsKate Connell (0000-0002-8219-9804, Queen's University Belfast, corresponding author), Kieran Connell
Year2017
Volume83
Issue1
Pages301-340
Publication date2017-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory Workshop Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1363-3554 • E-ISSN: 1477-4569
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/hwj/dbw022
OpenAlexW2618218760
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited20

This article examines the changing dynamics of a postwar British inner-city through the photographic lens of Janet Mendelsohn, an American student at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Between 1967 and 1969 Mendelsohn took more than 3,000 photographs and conducted scores of interviews with her subjects, although hitherto her work has remained largely unknown. Through her focus on Balsall Heath, one of the country’s largest ‘red light’ districts, Mendelsohn’s work offers a window onto the significant changes taking place there, which included the arrival and settlement of immigrants from the Caribbean and South Asia, the advancement of slum clearance and growing anxieties about prostitution. Through the distinctiveness of her ‘social eye’ and emphasis on the life of a single sex-worker in Balsall Heath this article shows how Mendelsohn was able to foreground the ambiguous, contradictory nature of the social practices that took place there.

Immigration · Inner city · Optimal distinctiveness theory · Race (biology) · Settlement (finance) · Slum · Sociology · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Demography · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Photography and Visual Culture · Psychology · Social Psychology