How Little We Know About the Neighbours

This documentary outlines the development of Britain’s Ethnographic Survey which was proposed to understand the current state of England and its people. This came about during a trent of mass observation. The government hired people to sit around all day, and making notes about what people did, how they did them, where they did them. Every detail was noted from afar, and those being observed were unaware. This group consisted of a number of men, called observers, and a number of photographers. They intended to track people for the purpose of understanding why Britain was in a social slump, with the hopes of understanding how the objects in their lives were connected to this repressive situation. “camera documented the collective unconscious of the people, and of the society that which could not be seen with the human eye”. These ‘observers’ were intended to fade into the background, as not to influence what it is that they observed.