Oil industry in Scotland: making photographs, making demands

Introduction

Photographs can solicit powerful emotional responses and are often used to draw people's attention to issues or to raise awareness of demands. This unit takes a look at how one set of photographs, used as part of a particular demand, was created. It looks at the process of producing images by exploring a series of photographs made with the intention of affecting the way a globalised industry is seen and understood. The industry in question is the oil industry based in Aberdeen, on Scotland's north-east coast, an industry with global ramifications. The unit reproduces several pictures researched and made by Owen Logan in collaboration with the history project Lives in the Oil Industry, based at the University of Aberdeen.

Following this series of photographs, you will listen to audio that explores stories about people who have worked in the oil industry, or whose lives have been affected by it.

We recommend you complete OpenLearn unit DD205_2 Claiming connections: a distant world of sweatshops? before working on this unit because you will be asked here to compare materials in that unit with those in this one.

This unit is an adapted extract from the course Living in a globalised world (DD205) [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .