The 80s: Photographing Britain

Taking you behind the lens during a decade of significant social and political change, discover the remarkable transformation of British photography in the 1980s and its impact on art across the world

This book will trace critical developments in photographic art in the UK, made by a diverse range of photographers in and around the Thatcher era (1976–1993). Rather than presenting a comprehensive history, the book will showcase more than 70 lens-based artists, and reveal numerous small histories, known and unknown, presented by a constellation of image makers (particularly Global Majority photographers), photography journals, photographer collectives, and theorists.

The publication will also pay close attention to the intersection between photography and the British Black arts movement, and to the theoretical developments in photography and representation from the perspectives of postmodernism and cultural theory by British scholars from the period, namely John Tagg, Victor Burgin, and Stuart Hall.

Photographers include Don McCullin, Martin Parr, Ingrid Pollard, Sunil Gupta, Wolfgang Tillmans, Keith Arnatt, Vanley Burke, Sirkka-Liisa Kontinnen, Marketa Luskacova, Joy Gregory, Paul Graham, Ajamu X, and many more key figures.

Yasufumi Nakamori is director of the Asia Society Museum, New York. He was previously senior curator of international art (photography) at Tate (2018–23). Helen Little is an independent curator and researcher. She was previously assistant curator, modern and contemporary British art at Tate Britain, London, where she specialized in British art from 1945 and realized major exhibitions and displays from this period.