1984: You have been watching

Taking photographs is but one way of documenting a subject, in truth collecting the ephemera is probably of more value. You can (and I do) trawl eBay, but there’s other things on t’internet to collect too. One of the things I’ve tried to do is show in pictures how cctv has become ingrained in our culture. Many think this is a new thing, but here’s a clip from ‘Are You Being Served’ from the 1970s. I remember the series being shite then (especially compared to it’s predecessor Dad’s Army), but if I say this extract is from an episode called ‘Big Brother’, you’ll see why it’s been harvested. Shops were the pioneers of cctv and with their use of video analytics to get you to buy more, they still are. Remember: Big Brother probably isn’t watching you – but your supermarket definitely is.