IVSA, San Francisco, 11-13 August 2004White man, black neighbourhood: 30 years of photography Dr Max FarrarSchool of Social ScienceLeeds Metropolitan University, UK

m.farrar@leedsmet.ac.uk

Theoretical frameworkMy sociology: structures and interactionsStructures of alienation, exclusion, oppressionHuman subjects in value-driven social interactionsMarx/Weber/Sartre/LevinasMy inner-city, multi-ethnic photography:Negotiating/reducing social distance; photography as a social relationshipRepresenting the possibilities for ethical, inclusive social relationships

1970s: politics is personalSelf: white, twenty-something, graduate student, middle class, male, libertarian socialistThe Others: South Asian, African-Caribbean, white European, all ages, male, female, all ages, all politicsBlack Power militants || White radicals missionariesPhotography (for Chapeltown News): distance (in spatial/social relations)

Africa-Caribbean GroundingChapeltown News June 1974

Linton Kwesi Johnson, dub poetUhuru Arts event at Cowper Street School, Chapeltown, Leeds, June 1974

Chapeltown 12 PicketLeeds Crown Court, June 1976

The Chapeltown 12Chapeltown News August 1976

The 1980s: personal politicsSelf: still white, now thirty-something, local legal advice worker, plenty of cultural capital, not much economic capital, male but pro-feminist, lib-soc but losing faithThe Others: as before; but segmenting, communal politics is growingFor some, new personal and political alliances develop, across ethnic boundariesPhotography: campaigning (distance); and personal (in closer)

A family: police raid homeCome-Unity News December 1981

1990s, 21st C . . . post-sociology; the radical politics of representationThatcher/Regan: the dominance of narcissistic individualismThe new radical politics of ethical, embodied subjectivityThe photographers assistants; and our children: bridging social distanceLevinas ethics: responsibility for the Other is called up by his/her faceSocial documentary photography as an incitement to ethical responsibility

Children, families, friendshipsSarah, Ros, Michelle, Claudia, Rose, our house, September 1990

Levinas: an ethics called into play by the encounter with a human faceThe presentation of the face puts me in relation with being. The existing of this being . . . Is effectuated in the non-postponable urgency with which he (sic) requires a response. The face in its nakedness as a face presents to me the destitution of the poor one and the stranger . . . [who] presents himself as an equal . . . It is my responsibility before a face looking at me . . . that constitutes the original fact of fraternity . . . Equality is produced where the other commands the same and reveals himself to the same in responsibility . . . It cannot be detached from the welcoming of the face . . . Society must be a fraternal community to be commensurate with the straightforwardness, the primary proximity, in which the face presents itself to my welcome.

Levinas, E Useless Suffering in Bernasconi, R and Woods, D (eds) (1988) The Provocation of Levinas, London: Routledge

Culture T, Community Radio DeeJay Making photo opportunities, an apartment in Chapeltown, September 1989

Nerious Joseph & Stone Roots in rehearsal Another Chapeltown apartment, July 1990

A family wedding: scars and Yardies Leeds Register Office, October 1995

Linton Kwesi JohnsonInternational Radical Black Book Fair, Leeds, November 1995

Michelles dad and other friends: our summer party just north of Chapeltown, July 2004

Conclusion: faces, friendship, photos, ethics A wedding party, near Chapeltown, July 2001

Academic narcissism . . .My book:The Struggle for Community in a British Multi-Ethnic Inner-city Area (Edwin Mellen, 2002)

My web-site: www.maxfarrar.org.uk