The 80s: Photographing Britain
Tate Britain, London
From November 21st, 2024 until May 5th, 2025
This week Tate Britain will be presenting its latest exhibition, The 80s: Photographing Britain. Home to a host of images, nearly 350 of them, as well as archive materials from the decade, the exhibition will look at how photographers used the medium of photography to capture the social, political, and economic landscape of the decade.
The social shifts of the ‘80s resulted in an intensely creative period for photography, and Tate Britain embraces these artistic expressions, in fact, it’s the largest survey of the medium’s development in the UK in the 1980s, to date.
Displaying the works of over 70 lens-based artists and collectives, The 80s: Photographing Britain focuses on a generation that engaged with new ideas of photographic practice, including Maud Sulter, Mumtaz Karimjee, and Mitra Tabrizian and documents the social changes across the UK, from John Davies’ post-industrial landscapes in Stockport to Tish Murtha’s portraits of youth unemployment in Newcastle.
It also showcases the technical developments of photography, from the advancements in colour practice to the impact of cultural theory by scholars such as Stuart Hall and Victor Burgin, and the significance of British photography magazines, Ten.8 and Camerawork, that spotlighted humanist, socialist and activist photography.
opening image: Martin Parr The Last Resort 23 From 'The Last Resort' 1983-1985 Tate Purchase 2002 © Martin Parr / Magnum Photos.
A tumultuous time for British politics, we see powerful images of the miners’ strikes by John Harris and Brenda Prince, anti-racism demonstrations by Syd Shelton and Paul Trevor, plus projects responding to the conflict in Northern Ireland by Willie Doherty and Paul Seawright.
It also records a changing Britain, and the increasing disparities between the underprivileged and corporate excesses, presented through Anna Fox’s images of greed, Martin Parr’s absurdist depictions of Middle England, and Markéta Luskačová and Don McCullin’s portraits of London’s disappearing East End.
A significant tool for representation, Roy Mehta, Zak Ové and Vanley Burke portray their multicultural communities, whilst the works of Roshini Kempadoo, Sutapa Biswas and Al-An deSouza highlight diasporic identities, and Maxine Walker’s self-portraiture celebrates ideas of Black beauty and femininity.
Visibility was another key theme of the decade, set against the backdrop of Section 28 and the AIDS epidemic, and photographers used the medium to showcase the LGBTQ+ community—at the Tate, we see this though Ajamu X, Lyle Ashton Harris and Rotimi Fani-Kayode, who contest stereotypes through intimate portraits.
Closing the show is a series of works that celebrate countercultural movements throughout the ‘80s, cue Ingrid Pollard and Franklyn Rodgers’s energetic documentation of underground performances and club culture, the emergence of i-D magazine and its impact on a new generation of photographers like Wolfgang Tillmans and Jason Evans, who with stylist Simon Foxton, rode this new wave of youth culture—and inspired others to do so—as Britain moved into the hedonistic 1990s.
For further information visit tate.org.uk.
