Janet Mendelsohn

Between 1966 and 1968, Janet Mendelsohn studied at the University of Birmingham's newly established Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies where she began to explore how photography could be used in field research. This exhibition brings together original prints from her archive of over 3,000 photographs, many of which were taken in the Balsall Heath area of Birmingham and focus on a prostitute called Tina with whom Mendelsohn formed a close friendship. The period in which she was capturing the city was a time of significant change due to the recent arrival of immigrants from the Caribbean and South Asia into Birmingham, and the images chart a community in a state of transition.