The photograph as ‘witness'

The child in the city (Ward 1978) is remarkable for its extensive use of photography. At the time, reproduction of images was a very expensive business and it is rare to find social science texts, even those written by anthropologists, containing any pictures at all, let alone the almost 200 that feature in Ward’s seminal text. In his foreword, Colin Ward expresses his indebtedness to Ann Golzen, who took most of the photographs, saying, “In attempting to convey the intensity, variety and ingenuity of the experience of urban childhood, the photographs are probably more effective than the text…”.