Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California

1936, printed c.1950, Dorothea Lange

Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California is a black and white photograph showing a woman holding a baby, with two older children standing on either side of her, leaning against her shoulders and facing away from the camera. The figures are shown close-to, with their heads and the upper parts of their bodies visible down to roughly their waists. Most of the setting is cropped out of the photograph, although a sheet of coarse material can be seen directly behind the sitters. The woman has dark hair that is swept back behind her head and wears a worn-looking cardigan over a checked shirt. Her right hand is raised to her chin and this, along with her furrowed brow and her eyes that gaze into the distance, gives her a reflective or concerned appearance. The two older children also have shabby clothes and unkempt-looking hair, and the baby has a slightly dirty face and is wrapped in a piece of cloth. At the right of the composition is what looks like a thick wooden stick, which is out of focus due to its close proximity to the camera, and on inspection a partly transparent thumb can be seen curled around the lower part of the stick.

Shimamoto Shozo making a painting by hurling glass bottles of paint against a canvas, 2nd Gutai Art exhibition

1956, printed 2012, Kiyoji Otsuji

This photograph is from the Japanese photographer Kiyoji Otsuji’s portfolio of forty-eight photographs known collectively as the Gutai Portfolio (Tate P82274–321). The portfolio comprises forty-eight black and white photographs, printed posthumously in 2012 with permission from the artist’s estate from negatives which were made between 1956 and 1957. This set is the seventh in an edition of seventeen; there also exist three artist’s proofs (other editions of the portfolio are in the collections of the Inhotim Institute in Brumadinho, Brazil and The Dallas Museum of Art). The series of images document emblematic works by members of the Japanese Gutai group, such as Tanaka Atsuko’s (born 1932) Electric Dress 1956 and Murakami Saburo’s (1925–1996) performance Passing Through 1956; such images are at times the only remaining manifestation of the often ephemeral work and actions of the Gutai artists and, as such, have been used to represent their work in publications and exhibitions about the group. The portfolio can be divided into twelve groups of images relating to performative actions that were conceived either as part of the production process for an artwork, or which constituted the work of art in itself. They relate to two landmark Gutai exhibitions: the 2nd Gutai Exhibition at Ohara Kaikan, Tokyo, circa 11–17 October 1956, and the Gutai Art on the Stage exhibition at the Sankei Kaikan halls in Osaka and Tokyo in 1957.

Members’ Club, Whitechapel, London

1950s, printed 2012, Bandele ‘Tex’ Ajetunmobi

This is one of a group of black and white photographs in Tate’s collection by Bandele Ajetunmobi – widely known as ‘Tex’ – in which he documented immigrant communities in the East End of London in the 1950s and 1960s, often focusing on the multi-racial nature of the area. The two photographs entitled Members’ Club, Whitechapel, London (Tate P14368 and P14370) date from the 1950s and are early documents of a multi-cultural London in the post-war years, at a time when a growing number of men and women were immigrating to Britain from the former colonies. They depict a musician and a mixed ethnicity couple in a club in the Whitechapel area, where many immigrants from the Caribbean settled. These types of venues were shaped by and for black people, but from the start were also frequented by white people. As the art historian Kobena Mercer has noted, in Britain ‘the nightlife surrounding black music was always a cross-cultural affair’ (Mercer 2012, p.15).

Notting Hill Couple

1967, Charlie Phillips OBE

[no title]

1965–6, Ernest Cole

This is one of a group of twenty-one black and white photographs in Tate’s collection from the South African photographer Ernest Cole’s series House of Bondage 1965–6 (Tate P82526–46). The photographs, which were taken on 35mm film, are gelatin silver prints on paper and are all untitled. The works can be described as documentary in practice, each capturing an element of day-to-day life under the Apartheid regime in South Africa. There is a particular focus on the black community: from the long commutes from townships to cities, shown in the overcrowding of trains; to the harsh conditions in gold mines and related accommodation for miners; to understaffed and underfunded hospitals; the daily realities of pass raids; and the destruction of townships to make space for building expansion. In some works, Cole has photographed signs that depict the rules that separated different strands of society under Apartheid, with permits needed to enter specific locations, or only allowing entry into buildings via specific routes. Other images are more playful, depicting children cooling off with a water sprinkler or friendships between black and white South Africans. For the most part, the subjects in the images seem to be unaware that they are being photographed.

In the House of My Father

1996–7, Donald Rodney

Rodney’s work addresses ideas of identity, family, home and Britishness in reference to a British, African Caribbean diaspora. In the House of My Father is a close-up image of the artist’s hand, in which sits a tiny sculpture of a house. The sculpture also exists as a separate work, My Mother. My Father. My Sister. My Brother 1996–7. Rodney constructed it from his own skin, removed during one of his many operations to combat sickle cell anaemia. This is an inherited disease that largely affects people of African, Caribbean, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Asian ancestry. As a British-born artist whose parents had emigrated from Jamaica, Rodney addresses family and identity in both works, as well as themes relating to mortality and his own illness.

Gallery label, October 2022

Remodelling Photo History: Realization

1981–2, Jo Spence, with Terry Dennett

This image is from Remodelling Photo History, a collaboration between Jo Spence and Terry Dennett. The work was originally published as a sequence of 13 photographs in which Spence and Dennett both act as photographer and photographic subject. The series was devised as a critique of standard histories of photography and particularly the depiction of women in art. It employs a practice Spence called ‘photo-theatre’. Each photograph emphasises its staging and construction in order to challenge and ‘make strange’ the assumed ‘naturalism’ of photography. Spence commented ‘it is obvious that a vast amount of work still needs to be done on the so-called history of photography, and on the practices, institutions and apparatuses of photography itself, and the function they have had in constructing and encouraging particular ways of viewing and telling about the world.’

Gallery label, November 2024

Memory

2012, Daido Moriyama

Untitled Film Still #17

1978, reprinted 1998, Cindy Sherman

Untitled Film Stills is a series of sixty-nine black-and-white photographs made between 1977 and 1980. In them Sherman appears as fictitious characters in scenarios resembling moments in a film. She used vintage clothing, wigs and makeup to create a range of female personae which she then photographed in apparently solitary, unguarded moments of reflection, undress, or in conversation with somebody off-set and outside of the frame. The ‘stills’ are set in a variety of interior locations as well as outside in urban and rural landscapes. They were begun shortly after Sherman moved to New York city with the artist Robert Longo (born 1953). Sherman studied art at the State University College at Buffalo, New York between 1972 and 1976, producing a series of black and white photographs which resulted in Untitled A, B, C and D 1975 (Tate P11437-40). The following photographic series, Bus Riders 1976 (Tate P78495-508 and P78535) and Murder Mystery Series 1976, are the direct precursors to the Film Stills. Sherman has commented:

Winding Towers (Britain)

1966–97, Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher

In 1966 a British Council grant enabled Bernd and Hilla Becher to travel to the UK and undertake their first significant project in Britain. During this trip they photographed all the major industrial areas, receiving assistance from the National Coal Board. Winding towers stand above mine shafts to hoist coal (and people) to the surface. The period over which this work was made saw the decimation of the coal industry in the UK; what had been working machines at the beginning of the project were relics by the time it was completed.

Gallery label, January 2016

Girls playing in the road, Wallsend, Tyneside

1975, printed 2012–13, Chris Killip

This one of a large group of black and white photographs in Tate’s collection taken in the north-east of England by the British photographer Chris Killip in the mid to late 1970s (see Tate P81021–P81037). Though born on the Isle of Man – which he also photographed (see Tate P20400–P20422) – Killip moved to Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the early 1970s and began to photograph the north-east of England extensively. Tate’s collection contains examples of his series General North East 1975–9 and Shipbuilding 1972–81, as well as the related series Huddersfield, Yorkshire 1973–4 (Tate P81015–P81020) and Seaside, Tyneside and Wearside 1975–6 (see Tate P81038–P81041).

Girl on a Spacehopper (Byker)

1971, printed 2012, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen

This photograph is from the extended series Byker 1969–81 by the Finnish-born British photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. The series documents the streets, buildings and primarily the inhabitants of Byker, a working class community in the north-east of England. Girl on a Spacehopper (Byker) depicts a child in an urban street in mid-air on a hopping ball, wearing a party dress and with her hair flying out behind her. The apparently carefree image provides a poignant contrast with the changes affecting her local neighbourhood that are documented in the rest of the series. This work is one of a number of gelatin silver prints in Tate’s collection that Konttinen printed from the 1969–81 series between 2012 and 2014. As is customary in Konttinen’s practice, the photographs are not editioned. All of the prints are signed and inscribed in pencil on the reverse with the title of the series, Byker, and the image and print dates.

Baroda

1983, Jyoti Bhatt

This is one of a group of black and white photographs in Tate’s collection by the Indian printmaker, painter and photographer Jyoti Bhatt (see Tate P14296–P14300 and P81231–P81235). They trace Bhatt’s photographic practice from an early stage and represent the development of a style which combined keen observation with inventive formal experimentation. From 1950 to 1959 Bhatt trained as a painter and muralist at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU) in Baroda (now Vadodara) in Gujarat – a major centre for modern and contemporary artistic practice in India. In 1956 he saw the seminal exhibition of photography Family of Man, toured by the Museum of Modern Art, New York and curated by photographer Edward Steichen (1879–1973), in Ahmedabad and began to experiment with photography himself the next year. Throughout his career, and alongside an extensive practice as a printmaker and painter, Bhatt sustained his engagement with both the formal and material aspects of photography, which he learned through experimenting with technique and compositional elements. His early images, such as Feroz Katpitia as Salvador Dalí, Baroda c.1959 (Tate P81232), relate to the modernist Bauhaus experiments of László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) and led to the development of his mature style which featured double exposures and diptychs involving portraiture, nature and abstract subjects.

Untitled from the series Reflections of the Black Experience

1986, printed 2010, Sunil Gupta

Gupta was an active figure in the cultural politics of London in the 1980s, notably through the British Black Arts movement and Autograph ABP (Association of Black Photographers). In his photographs he explores the identity of people who are marginalised due to their race, sexuality or country of origin. Coronet Cinema, Notting Hill Gate is an autobiographical image. It shows a couple (Gupta and his white lover) posing outside a cinema advertising the 1985 film My Beautiful Laundrette, the story of a romance between a south Asian man and a white man.

Gallery label, September 2018

Shanti - Staged Portrait, Dakshinpuri, Delhi

1991, printed 2014, Sheba Chhachhi

This series includes both staged and documentary images. Chhachhi selected them from a body of work that records her long-term engagement with the feminist movement in India. Chhachhi’s images were used in posters, pamphlets and street theatre campaigns to end violence against women. In 1990 she reshot portraits of fellow activists taken years earlier. She encouraged the sitters to pose with objects of personal value. Chhachhi calls this ‘an invitation to perform the self’. She saw this collaboration as a way of redressing ‘the balance of power’ between artist and sitter.

Gallery label, December 2019

‘Everything is connected in life...’

1992–3, Gillian Wearing CBE

For this series, Gillian Wearing stood on a busy street and asked passersby to write down what was on their mind. She then photographed them holding their statements. She was interested in how the public and private identities of ordinary people are self-fashioned and documented. A broad cross-section of people participated in the series. It provides a fascinating social and historical document, capturing the economic decline in Britain in the early 1990s as well as the expression of intimate thoughts or personal convictions.

Gallery label, January 2025

Oceans Apart

1989, Ingrid Pollard MBE

Oceans Apart presents the Atlantic Ocean as a physical and psychological space. Pollard juxtaposes historical imagery of British colonisation and slavery in the Atlantic world with personal family photographs accompanied by brief first-person texts. One panel combines a photograph of crashing waves with snapshots from her childhood and the lines, ‘my dear daughter now we are oceans apart ... oceans apart ... oceans apart’, referencing Pollard’s father’s departure from Guyana to England before the family could join him. Pollard centres the experiences and representation of Black Caribbean subjects, showing how personal narratives speak to broader histories.

Gallery label, January 2022

A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai)

1993, Jeff Wall

A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) is a large colour photograph displayed in a light box. It depicts a flat, open landscape in which four foreground figures are frozen as they respond to a sudden gust of wind. It is based on a woodcut, Travellers Caught in a Sudden breeze at Ejiri (c.1832) from a famous portfolio, The Thirty-six Views of Fuji, by the Japanese painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Wall photographed actors in a landscape located outside his home town, Vancouver, at times when similar weather conditions prevailed over a period of five months. He then collaged elements of the photograph digitally in order to achieve the desired composition. The result is a tableau which appears staged in the manner of a classical painting. As in Hokusai’s original, two men clutch their hats to their heads while a third stares up into the sky, where his trilby is being carried away by the wind. On the left, a woman’s body is halted in a state of shock, her head concealed by her scarf which has been blown around her face. A sheaf of papers in her hand has been dispersed by the gust and their trajectory, over the centre of the image, creates a sense of dynamic movement. Two narrow trees, also in the foreground, bend in the force of the wind, releasing dead leaves which mingle with the floating papers. In Hokusai’s image the landscape is a curving path through a reed-filled area next to a lake, leading towards Mount Fuji in the far distance. In Wall’s version, flat brown fields abut onto a canal. Small shacks, a row of telegraph poles and concrete pillars and piping evoke industrial farming. The unromantic nature of the landscape is reinforced by a small structure made of corrugated iron in the foreground. The pathway on which the figures stand is a dirt track extending along the front of the photograph from one side to the other. There is no sense of connection between the characters, whose position in the landscape appears incongruous. Two wear smart city clothes, adding to the sense of displacement.

Fen Ma Liuming

1993, Ma Liuming

This is one of a group of gelatin silver prints in the Tate collection documenting performances by the Chinese artist Ma Liuming. Many of the performances took place in the Dongcun artists’ colony of Beijing East Village in the early 1990s. Ma joined the colony in 1993 having been active as one of the originators of modern performance art in China since the late 1980s. This photograph, taken in 1993 by the artist Xu Zhiwei, shows Ma Liuming turning into Fen-Ma Liuming, his feminine alter-ego and a character he would adopt in a number of subsequent performances. Here he is shown wearing a flowery dress, chiffon scarf and large earrings, while a pair of hands to the right of the image appear to help with the transformation. Other images (see Tate P81262 and P81264) also show Ma being assisted with his hair and make-up as he becomes Fen-Ma. In 1999 Ma described his alternative artistic persona: ‘Fen-Ma Liuming is the character that I have been constantly enacting in my performances for the past few years and whose characteristics are an effeminate face and a body of a man’ (quoted in Marella Gallery 2007, p.9).

Dust Storms at Noon on the R34 Between Welkom and Hennenman, Free State I

2007, printed 2011, Santu Mofokeng

Mofokeng’s work draws links between historical trauma and what he calls ‘mutations in nature’. In his series Climate Change, he traces the damage caused by South Africa’s history of mining and abandoned industrial progress. These photographs document land turning into desert, flooding and polluted soil. They also point to the effects of massive carbon emissions on the entire planetary ecosystem. ‘I’m saying: this is what we’re all afraid of’, he commented.

Gallery label, June 2021

Untitled 17

2006, printed 2020, Sammy Baloji

In Mémoire, Baloji superimposes colonial-era images onto contemporary photographs of mining infrastructure in ruin. Baloji was born in Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Haut-Katanga province. The region is rich in minerals such as copper, cobalt and uranium, and was exploited by Belgian colonial powers, authoritarian governments and private companies for more than a century. Following a decline in the 1990s, the mining industry has returned to meet the global demand for coltan used in electronics manufacturing. Baloji’s photomontages highlight an ongoing history of exploitation, prosperity and decline. In each image Baloji joins two views of the same landscape, a visual metaphor for the spaces and peoples scarred by colonialism and the impact of globalisation. A group of women and children, prisoners in chains, and a labourer hold centre frame. Contemporary figures amid the ruins appear hidden in the landscape.

Gallery label, June 2023

Chiddy Doing Rene’s Hair

2019, printed 2021, Rene Matić

bystander #14

2016, printed 2021, Mari Katayama

In this self-portrait, Katayama is wearing one of her soft sculptures made from stuffed textile arms. She is lying down on Naoshima Island in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. Made during the artist’s residency there, the hands and arms represent both Katayama and residents from the local community. The bystander series is the first time other people’s bodies featured in her work. Stitched with small pearls and decorated with white lace, the sculpture appears to be part of her body yet also alien to her at the same time. This may suggest both the difficulty and the power of living with others, which Katayama encountered during the residency.

Gallery label, October 2023

Channel #10

2014, Simryn Gill

These photographs show evidence of sea pollution in a small mangrove forest in Port Dickson, Malaysia, Gill’s hometown. Colourful plastic bags and other rubbish have washed up with the tides, getting stuck in branches and roots. In the black and white photographs, it can be hard to distinguish the waste among the plants. The first photo shows large cargo ships in the distance. This suggests the activities of Port Dickson’s commercial harbour are the source of the detritus. More widely, the series raises questions about the consequences of globalisation on the environment.

Gallery label, April 2021

In-security

2003, Zanele Muholi

This is one of a group of six gelatin silver prints in Tate’s collection from Zanele Muholi’s series Only Half the Picture 2003–6 (Tate P81289–P81294). The series, which exists in an edition of eight with one artist’s proof, dates from an early moment in Muholi’s career; it was foundational for much of their later practice which confronts stereotypes and taboos faced by the black LGBTQI community in South Africa. Muholi trained at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, an organisation founded in 1989 by South African photographer David Goldblatt (1930–2018) to ensure that visual literacy was accessible to all. Muholi’s first-hand knowledge of the LGBTQI community ensures a level of trust between photographer and participant that lends their work an intimate perspective on the challenges facing black lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and intersex people.

Noora’s Room

2020, Farah Al Qasimi

This is one of a group of photographs in Tate’s collection by Farah al Qasimi that present interiors and scenes of striking colours, shimmering textures and graphic textiles. They were taken in the United Arab Emirates and the United States, countries between which the artist lives and works, playfully engaging with cultural signifiers, gendered expressions of identity and colonial legacies in the Middle East. Each photograph exists in an edition of five with two artist’s proofs.