{"id":816261,"date":"2026-10-28T06:58:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T06:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/816261\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T06:58:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T06:58:23","slug":"what-happens-when-kids-get-behind-the-camera-a-bold-new-book-explores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/816261\/","title":{"rendered":"What happens when kids get behind the camera? A bold new book explores"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-block-key=\"g9f4a\">The project began when Annebella started looking for the photographs taken by children at the turn of the 20th century, after Kodak released the <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk\/a-z-photography-collection-b-is-for-brownie\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Box Brownie camera<\/a>, which was specifically advertised and sold to children. The hunt led her to museums and school archives across the country, where she was often met by dead ends. \u201cMuseums, for the most part, have not tended to value children\u2019s photos,\u201d with some exceptions, she explains. \u201cA lot of the material in the book comes from my own collection, built through decades of very cheap purchases in secondhand markets or from house clearance finds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"47d44\">Building upon this, Annebella read a lot of children\u2019s comics and reached out to older photographers for their early images, which brought about thousands of never-before-seen childhood photos. \u201cThese offered me life stories that put photo narratives at their heart,\u201d she says, \u201ctheir photos showed me how children used cameras to express themselves as autonomous beings, separate from their parents and other adults.\u201d With a camera, it seems that most children were left to their own devices, which granted them the space and freedom to play and make mistakes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"a0r39\">In 1999, children aged seven, 11 and 15 were recruited by Kodak for a research project, where they were freely given disposable cameras that they could do whatever they wanted with. \u201cThose children spoke about the photos they took,\u201d Annebella says, \u201cwith friends flicking V-signs and baring their bottoms; dogs dressed up in sunglasses and hats.\u201d In this project alone, we see how children, when granted the space, positioned themselves in opposition to adults, \u201cwhose photography they found too \u2018proper\u2019,\u201d she suggests. \u201cThe permissiveness meant that they felt enabled to dispose of planning, posing and other parental photographic norms, their excitement, spontaneity and play remain inspiring,\u201d Annebella ends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The project began when Annebella started looking for the photographs taken by children at the turn of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-816261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}