British Photography from the Thatcher Years Susan Kismaric
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British photography from the Thatcher years Susan Kismaric Author Kismaric, Susan Date 1991 Publisher The Museum of Modern Art: Distributed by H.N. Abrams ISBN 0870701916, 0810960931 Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/329 The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists. MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE THATCHER YEARS Susan Kis marie The Museum of Modern Art , New York BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE THATCHER YEARS BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE THATCHER YEARS Susan Kismaric The Museum of Modern Art , New York Distributed by Harry N. Abrams , 7/?c., New York j\ r 1 HoHA Published on the occasion of the exhibition TRUSTEES OF Mrs. Bertram Smith "British Photography from the Thatcher THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART Jerry I. Speyer Years," organized by Susan Kismaric, Curator Mrs. Alfred R. Stern Department of Photography Mrs. Donald B. Straus The Museum of Modern Art New York Mrs Jo|m „ Rockefe||er 3rd February 14 - Apr,I 28. 1990 ^ Q Robert L. B. Tobin E. Thomas Williams, Jr. Richard S. Zeisler Copyright © 1990 by David Rockefeller The Museum of Modern Art, New York Chairman of the Board *Trustee Emeritus All rights reserved **I lonorary Trustee Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number Mrs. Henry Ives Cobb 90-063972 Gifford Phillips ISBN 0-87070-191-6 (Museum of Modern Art) Vice Chairmen Ex Officio ISBN 0-8109-6093-1 (Harry N. Abrams) Donald B. Marion David N. Dinkins Edited by Susan Weiley President Mayor of the City of New York Designed by Jody Hanson Production by Tim McDonough Elizabeth Holtzman Composition by The Sarabande Press, Mrs. Frank Y. Larkiri Comptroller of the City of New York New York Executive Vice President Printed by Franklin Graphics, Providence Bound by Sendor Bindery, Inc., New York Agnes Gund Joann K. Phillips Ronald S. Lauder President of The International Council Distibuted in the United States and Canada Vice Presidents by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York A Times Mirror Company John Parkinson III Vice President and Treasurer Distributed outside the United States and COMMITTEE ON Canada by Thames and Hudson Ltd., London Frederick M. Alger III PHOTOGRAPHY The Museum of Modern Art Lily Auchincloss 11 West 53 Street Edward Larrabee Barnes New York,New York 10019 Celeste G. Bartos John Parkinson III Sid R. Bass Chairman H.R.H. Prinz Franz von Bayem** Printed in the United States of America Gordon Bunshaft Robert B. Menschel Thomas S. Carroll* Paul F. Walter Marshall S. Cogan Vice Chairmen Front cover: Martin Parr. Robert R. Douglass Conservative "midsummer madness" party, Arthur M. Bullowa from The Cost of Living. 1987-89 Gianluigi Gabetti Lillian Gish** Mrs. Henry Ives Cobb Paul Gottlieb Anne B. Ehrenkranz Mrs. Melville Wakeman Hall Wendy Larsen George Heard Hamilton* Mrs. Ronald S. Lauder Barbara Jakobson Pierre N. Leval John L. Loeb Harriette Levine Mrs. John L. Marion Mark Levine Robert B. Menschel Beaumont Newhall* Dorothy C. Miller** John C. Waddell J. Irwin Miller** Clark B. Winter, Jr. S.I. Newhouse, Jr. Mrs. Bruce Zenkel Philip S. Niarchos James G. Niven *Honorary Member Richard E. Oldenburg Peter G. Peterson John Rewald** Ex Officio David Rockefeller, Jr. Mrs. John I). Rockefeller 3rd Rodman C. Rockefeller David Rockefeller Richard E. Salomon Donald Marron Mrs. Wolfgang Schoenborn* Richard Oldenburg The Museum of Modern Art library CONTENTS British Photography from the Thatcher Years by Susan Kismaric Plates: Chris Killip Graham Smith John Davies Martin Parr Paul Graham Selected Exhibitions and Bibliographies Acknowledgments BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE THATCHER YEARS Within the last decade photography in Britain has expe Since 1980 British photography has assumed a new rienced a renaissance. Throughout the twentieth centu and vital identity. The work currently being produced ry, the tradition of British photography has been varies greatly and parallels developments throughout plagued by a kind of fitfulness, and to a postwar Amer the 1970s in the United States and elsewhere, and it ican audience, photography in Britain appeared to con includes photographs of studio constructions, darkroom sist of the work of Bill Brandt (1904-1983) and, to manipulations, and choreographed narratives. But the slightly more knowledgeable viewers, Roger Mayne (b. tradition in British photography that has been most 1929) and Tony Ray-Jones (1941-1972). In 1973 John strongly developed in the last decade is that of the Szarkowski, director of the Department of Photography "social documentary. This work is about the quality of at The Museum of Modern Art, described the situation life in contemporary Britain. It is the result of a conflu from an American perspective when he wrote in Look ence of cultural and historical circumstances that ing at Photographs : occurred throughout the 1970s and came to fruition in For purposes of approximate truth , it might be said the economic and social climate generated by the poli that the photographic tradition died in England cies and legislation of the government of Margaret sometime around 1905. When [Bill] Brandt Thatcher, who became Britain's Prime Minister in 1979 and retired late in 1990. returned to London in the thirties , England had for gotten its rich photographic past , and showed no Mrs. I hatcher and the Conservative party were signs of seeking a photographic present. 1 reelected in 1983 and 1987, making her the Prime Minister who led the British people longer than anyone While this statement caused something of a flap within else in the twentieth century. She emerged as the bold the British photographic establishment, the truth it est challenger to what she considered the destructive contained was not ignored. At the time Szarkowski's excess ol Britain's welfare state, which requires high words were read as a chastening voice from outside, levels ol taxation and ubiquitous state intervention. and subsequent writing about British photography by After moving Britain toward an American- style market the British often included a reference to the comment, economy in her first two terms, Thatcher introduced a an accurate description of the state of British photogra series of cutbacks in education, public housing, and phy until 1970. 2 Of course commercial and artistic health-care benefits during her third term that under photographs were being made in Britain throughout the mined the welfare system established in the 1940s on 3 twentieth century, however they lacked a cohesive and the principle of "freedom from want." visible context: they had not been organized into collec While conditions of poverty are endemic to any soci tions, published in books, orchestrated as exhibitions, ety, and the economic disparities between the classes in or analyzed in doctoral theses. England existed long before the leadership of Margaret 6 Thatcher, the new cutbacks rendered those at the bot rarely mounted photography exhibitions and very few- 4 tom of the economic scale more abject. It is also true photography books were published. It was not until that since the election of Thatcher the middle class has 1966 that Shadow and Light, a retrospective volume of increased significantly in Britain, so that an ever- Bill Brandt's photographs, was published. There was no expanding group now enjoys the comforts previously authoritative voice in Britain from w hich photographers available only to a much smaller segment of the popu might learn or against which they might react. There lation. These changes in the quality of British life are existed, for example, no moral support of photography, profound, and touch the core of the identity of the such as that provided to some degree in the United British as citizens. They have aflected as well those States by The Museum of Modern Art, which started photographers committed to extending the tradition of collecting photographs in 1930, and by George East social documentary photography. man House in Rochester, New York, which began its photography collection in 1949. Nor did Britain have the benefit, as did Americans, of the work of such pio Although current British social documentary photogra neering figures as Alfred Stieglitz and Beaumont 0 phy began to evolve in the 1960s and came to fruition Newhall. It was not until 1976 that London's Victoria in the 1980s, to the American viewer it seemed to devel and Albert Museum created the new position of Assis op overnight. For the most part, this work was seen for tant Keeper of Photographs. The Royal Photographic the first time in America in books that became available Society, founded in 1853 as The Photographic Society beginning in the earlv 1980s. Since books of pho of London, held its collections in several largely inac tographs usually involve a long period of preparation, cessible locations until they reassembled them in 1971. these were to the discerning reader evidence of how The second major obstacle, as Badger saw- it, and intently, and for how long, British photographers had one not so unusual within the ragged history of the been enlivening their medium. Chris Killip published In medium, was the reluctance to accept what he termed Flagrante in 1988. Although he began the project in the "straight photographic aesthetic" over the aesthet 1976, it took him thirteen years to complete the work ics of "the traditional, academic, graphic media." 7 He and publish the book to his satisfaction. The photogra defined "straight" as "the employment of the raw, basi phers whose work is included here —Killip, Graham cally mechanistic recording faculty ol the camera, Smith, John Davies, Martin Parr, and Paul Graham — though with an expressive rather than functional end in have among them published twelve books since 1980. mind." By the second half of the twentieth century this In 1976 British photography critic Gerry Badger aesthetic had been confined in England to the pages of published "On British Photography: Some Personal newspapers and magazines such as The Picture Post , Thoughts," a thorough and insightful account of British Weekly Illustrated , and The Daily Mirror.