Reading the 1980s. Photography and Identity in Thatcher’s Britain

Art historian Kobena Mercer once asked: “What exactly was it about the condition of England, as compared to other European countries or the US, that made it such a fertile site for the flourishing of diasporic outlooks and identities in the 1980s?” This course takes Mercer’s question as its point of departure, returning to 1980s Britain to examine how photography became a crucial site for negotiating identity, race, nationhood, and belonging during the era of Thatcherism. Students will take part in close readings of key texts from the 1980 and 1990s that examined how shifts in cultural policy, funding and collective initiatives reimagined the visual and political landscape in Britain.

The 1980s were a defining decade for the UK art scene. Against the backdrop Conservative leadership led by Margaret Thatcher, Britain experienced sweeping economic restructuring, rising unemployment and debates over immigration, citizenship, and British identity. In this climate, photography emerged as a vital political and cultural practice for artists, collectives, and communities to document lived realities, challenge dominant representations, and articulate new forms of British subjectivity in what Stuart Hall called the end of innocence.

The first half of the course will focus on the political formations that shaped Black British identity in the late 1970s and 1980s. We will explore the development of Black political thought as a response to state racism and the crisis of national identity. For this, we turn to the Greater London Council and its cultural policy developed for the Year of Anti-Racism. We examine how policymakers sought to define racism, address inequalities in the funding of the cultural industries, and redirect resources toward communities that had long been neglected. Although these initiatives were heavily criticised in the 1990s by scholars such as Paul Gilroy, this course invites students to consider the extent to which such policies were necessary, both for racialised communities and a burgeoning arts scene.

Building on this political foundation, the second half of the course turns to the artistic landscape as sites where these debates were staged and transformed. With a focus on photography, we will examine how artists used the camera not only to document social conditions but to construct new forms of diasporic subjectivity and self-representation.

Students will be encouraged to consider how these themes have continued ramifications today as the UK reckons once again with questions of national identity and the rise of right-wing politics.