Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the theme of class tourism, with particular attention to the role of photography, in a critical case study of the imagery of the metropolitan working classes in London in the 1920s.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the collaboration between the society portraitist E.O Hoppe and the novelist J.D Beresford that resulted in the publication of 'Taken from Life', (1922), a book combining both photographic and literary typologies of London's lower classes. Here, 'Taken from Life' is situated within its authors' respective careers and considered within the broader discourses of class differentiation and Social Darwinism active in Britain in the 1920s. I argue that 'Taken from Life' is permeated by a superficially benign, but ultimately paternalistic, 'class tourism', a form of voyeurism that derives from its uneasy combination of sociological speculation with both anecdote and fiction.