The Brooklyn Rail

The 1980s were an era of tumultuous change in Britain. On the one hand, it was a decade defined, for better or for worse, by the figure of Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the full-throated embrace of those neoliberal values—from free market fundamentalism to a particularly depressing form of the middle-class suburban lifestyle—that form the ideological backdrop of the country to this very day. On the other hand, thanks to the influence of figures like Stuart Hall and the emergence of cultural studies, they were also a time marked by the birth of identity politics. This decade saw newly visible identities and subjectivities burst onto the scene, crying for representation and yearning to make their voices finally heard.

Depending on where you stood in terms of race, gender, or class, the 1980s would seem a time of unprecedented economic expansion, an era defined by the triumph of consumerism and a particularly brass form of hedonism, or else an era of widening disparities, rising unemployment, and generalized economic crisis; a time defined by the booming of the housing market or the return of homelessness; a time of general disaffection and disillusionment toward the prospects of organized politics or an era defined by political activism and struggle, often hyperlocal in nature, as well as successive waves of discontent that at different points rocked the nation.

Perfectly in tune with the approach that came to dominate the culture in those years, The 80s: Photographing Britain, now on view at Tate Britain, consciously adopts a “sociocultural” lens that focuses less on the work of individual geniuses and provides instead a wide, almost diffused, bird’s-eye view of the decade through the sheer variety of its photographic expressions. The first room, tellingly titled “Documenting the Decade,” features a series of photographs that bear witness to the main protests of the period—the miners’ strike of 1984–85, marches against racial and sexual discrimination, as well as lesser known instances such as the women-led anti-nuclear peace camp of Greenham Commons and riots against Thatcher’s poll tax—all “photographed through an activist lens.”

From there the exhibition, the largest of its kind to date, branches out through a series of rooms organized around thematic resonances. The one that immediately follows, titled “The Cost of Living,” for instance, portrays winners and losers of Thatcher’s economic shock therapy by juxtaposing images of impossibly twee garden parties, conservative meetings from Martin Parr’s namesake series, and Anna Fox’s snapshots of yuppies gorging on their English Breakfast with Don McCullin’s and Markéta Luskačová’s images of East End down-and-outs, as well as Paul Graham’s distillations of terminal boredom in job center waiting rooms.

This exploration of class dynamics and the very unequal way the fruits of Thatcherism were reaped by different groups and communities continues in the rooms titled “Community” and “Colour.” Here, Chris Killip’s timeless pictures of poor “sea-coalers” in the rapidly deindustrialising North East and other beautiful evocations of British working-class, often diverse, communities “observed from within” soon give way to other garish, tongue-in-cheek jabs at the new cult of consumerism, its idols, and its places of worship: wonderfully chaotic, crowded snapshots of families vacationing in Brighton again by Martin Parr, but also dispatches from suburban US-style supermarkets and retail parks by Paul Reas and lewd pictures of nightclubs by Tom Wood.

Still, the lion’s share of the show is provided by those works that explore ideas of identity and representation or use self-portraiture as a tool of self-affirmation and a way to reclaim agency. The room “Reflections of the Black Experience,” which takes its cue from the namesake exhibition which opened Brixton Art Gallery in South London in 1986, reunites documentary snapshots of Black people captured in quotidian, recreational settings with those of other people of color under the banner of “political blackness.” In a later room, artists such as Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Ajamu X, and Lyle Ashton Harris contribute powerful nude studies and portraits that celebrate Black queer sexuality against a backdrop dominated by the AIDS epidemic. Meanwhile, in the room titled “Self-Portraiture” stills from Handsworth Self Portrait (1979), a project in which passers-by from all walks of life were asked to take a picture of themselves in a makeshift photo studio, are juxtaposed with images that similarly explore the power of putting oneself in the frame.

Another undercurrent which comes up at different points in the show is the exploration of photography’s expanding language and the possibilities provided by mediums such as fashion and advertising. The room “Image and Text” showcases conceptual works inspired by the theories of artist-cum-academic Victor Burgin, but the most impactful amongst these kinds of photographs are those that deal with issues of visibility and preserve a personal, testimonial thrust. Conspicuous among these are Sunil Gupta’s series ‘Pretended’ Family Relationships (1988), which shows portraits of queer couples “captioned” by the legislative wording of Section 28, a law passed in the same year by Thatcher’s government which curtailed the intentional promotion of homosexuality, and Tessa Boffin’s reimaginings of literary characters as lesbians.

In general, the critical reception of the show has been rather lukewarm. Many broadsheet commentators have lamented the meandering nature of the exhibition, while one critic noted the programmatic downplaying of the decade’s heavy-hitters. (Don McCullin and Chris Killip get a handful of photographs each, while virtuoso of political photomontage Peter Kennard is relegated to display cases.) Such assessments feel a little unfair and condescending to the excellent artists who do get a good showing, and in any case this curatorial approach is consistent with the intention of the exhibition—that is, to present eighties Britain not as a ossified relic but rather a container of multitudes, a country animated by competing, clashing energies and defying coherent description in a way that feels very reminiscent of today. A neoliberal hellhole, a nightmare of petit bourgeois conformity and cheapness, and at the same time an increasingly tolerant, multicultural, and open society, which finds its motor and pride in diversity and the endless project of self-fashioning.