A Record of England: Sir Benjamin Stone and the National Photographic Association 1897-1910

This volume explores the origins, formulation and eventual failure of the National Photographic Record Association which was founded by Stone, its driving force. It emerged from the wider photographic survey movement in which amateur photographs were encouraged to record and archive the antiquities and customs of the British Isles photographically, and deposit the results for the public good in the British Museum.

Based on detailed and new archival research the volume brings a fresh and more nuanced reading to Stone’s photography, positioning it not in terms of individual vision but in the wider cultural processes of both amateur photography and the preservationist movement as an expression of historical consciousness. It argues that, contrary to earlier readings, survey photography cannot be reduced to a middle class nostalgia but is concerned with a dynamic vision of the place of the past in the future and the creation of a collective memory bank for the nation. The volume comprises a scholarly essay, bibliography and selection of photographs, made specifically to demonstrate those arguments.