Placement Blog: Alice Sage | Edinburgh Museums and Galleries, ‘Photographing Fairies’

Photographing Fairies
A CHASE placement, through Edinburgh Museums and Galleries.

See the exhibition at stills.org/fairies

This project was inspired by the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Cottingley Fairy Photographs in December 1920. This infamous hoax by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths produced the original viral selfies — photos of fairies which convinced many people of the existence of supernatural life, but also sparked fierce debate about the agency and ability of girls.

I mention the Cottingley photos in my PhD thesis — Fairies, Fathers and Fantasies of Childhood in London 1915-30 — but felt there was potential to create a public history project around them.

My intention was to manage and curate an exhibition at the Writers Museum, Edinburgh, which would display the Cottingley Fairy Photographs in the context of fairies in art and literature. As well as marking this history, I wanted to introduce a contemporary point of view with a feminist agenda. What would girls the same age as Frances Griffiths think about these photographs now — would they ever be fooled by fake images? How could I bring girls’ creativity into a space dominated by old men? Questions of girls’ selfie culture, fake news and deepfakes seemed to connect the fairy pictures to present concerns.

I approached three partners for the project:
Edinburgh Museums and Galleries, in particular the Writers Museum and the Museum of Childhood. Lyn Wall, Museums and Engagement manager, would be my placement supervisor.
Sarah Dunnigan from SELCIE (Scotland’s Early Literature for Children Initiative) at the University of Edinburgh. Sarah would contribute expertise on the history of fairies.
Stills centre for photography, a gallery and teaching space in Edinburgh, would host the outreach aspect of the project. The Creative Learning Manager was Claire Cochrane, followed by her parental leave cover Emma Black.

This was an extremely ambitious project for a year part time — but I have professional experience making exhibitions and was confident I could pull it off. This placement offered me new opportunities to work with young people, to manage fund-raising and to lead partnerships, and was an opportunity to update my curatorial portfolio and make professional contacts before finishing my PhD.

From November 2019, we drafted applications for funders, with success from Edinburgh University impact fund and the Ragdoll Foundation. In January 2020 I visited Bradford to see the original photographs and cameras I hoped to borrow, and in February I was writing further funding applications to support the costs of conservation and transport, and visiting the Edinburgh archives with SELCIE volunteers.

Then coronavirus hit. The museums closed, project partners were furloughed and we all had to focus on getting though that first lockdown. I also had to finish my thesis. I kept doing image research and writing text for the exhibition, but after a while, it became clear that the exhibition would not go ahead as planned. The Writers Museum was closed indefinitely.

By September 2020, the placement had changed to focus on the engagement project, to reshape the photography course for social distancing and have an exhibition at Stills gallery in February 2021 (3 months later than planned). We had originally hoped to use the darkroom, set up portrait sessions in the studio and go out finding fairies around the city. Of course, these plans had to change, and we planned for online workshops leading to a physical exhibition.

The Ragdoll Foundation were happy for us to use our £5000 grant in this way. It seemed urgent that young people, who had been locked down at home for months, had something creative to do together. In October 2020, artist Morwenna Kearsley started working with two groups who met regularly through Edinburgh Young Carers and Edinburgh Multi-cultural Family Base. I drove around Edinburgh delivering boxes of art materials so every participant had what they needed to take part.

We spent a couple of hours a week together on zoom, led by Kearsley in experimental image-making and image-faking. In 1917, Elsie Wright used scissors and glue to create fairies that convinced even Arthur Conan Doyle, so that’s where we started. The groups made collages, did collaborative drawings, and staged fake photographs. Morwenna and the young artists overcame many challenges of working in lockdown — technical glitches, dodgy sound, tiny phone screens etc — to create interesting and beautiful works. I led a curation workshop, the group deciding how they wanted their work displayed.

All the way through to Christmas 2020 we were working towards a physical exhibition, with loans from a number of artists. And then a new lockdown meant that Stills closed, and we finally decided to put all the work online. This was totally new for me — I am used to the limitations of a physical space, and the 3-dimensional aesthetics of framed artworks and text labels. Excitingly, without the costs of a physical exhibition, we could commission some films, music and illustration for the website, and I have designed a book which will provide a permanent record of the groups’ work. This will be printed with support from the CHASE Feminist Network, and distributed across the UK.

The whole placement has lasted 6 months longer than planned, and has been fraught with disappointments and loss, as one by one, the things I hoped to do became impossible. However, a global pandemic has the magic effect of showing what is important, and I have learned that small victories are still victories. The final exhibition achieves the democratic approach I hoped for, by introducing girls’ voices into the Cottingley story. Many more people will be able to see the online exhibition and it will also have a lasting legacy. I’ve written a blog post for Edinburgh Museums / SELCIE which shares the research in their archive.

Rather than focussing on a particular outcome, I decided to lead a project where people had the opportunity to enjoy themselves in tough times, and freelancers have been paid properly when work is scarce. Now at the end of the placement, I can see that I have learned many things that will help me most-PhD: online curation, remote team working, leading zoom workshops and all that, as well as a sense of perspective.