Mass-Observation and Visual Culture: Depicting Everyday Lives in Britain critically analyses the role that visual culture played in the early development of Mass-Observation, the innovative British anthropological research group founded in 1937. The group s production and use of painting, collage, photography, and other media illustrates not only the broad scope of Mass-Observation s efforts to document everyday life, but also, more specifically, the centrality of visual elements to its efforts at understanding national identity in the 1930s.

Although much interest has...