The Sunday Times Magazine • 37F
or the first few decades of the 20th century
Britain’s artistic elite looked down on
documentary photography as a trade rather
than an art form. “The established notion of
artistic photography was pictorialism, which
aped painting,” writes the photographer and
critic Gerry Badger in his new book, Another
Country. It took Britain far longer than other
European countries, or America, to acknowledge
it as a serious creative pursuit; as Badger notes,
the Tate introduced a dedicated photography
department with a permanent curator only in 2009.
In Another Country, Badger collates some of the
most significant British documentary works, among
them Howard Grey’s 1960s portraits of the Windrush
generation arriving in Britain, Philip Jones Griffiths’s
1970s reportage of the Troubles in Northern Ireland
and Martin Parr’s shots of holidaymakers at the
seaside in Merseyside in the 1980s. Badger explains
why such images burn so vividly today. “Photography
uniquely provides an immediate and affecting view,”
he writes, “especially after the subject of an image
has changed or altered, a process that of course
begins as soon as the image is taken and only gains
significance with the passing years. That is why the
central subject of photography is so often history,
and why the medium continues to fascinate.” ■Another Country: British Documentary Photography
Since 1945 by Gerry Badger is published by Thames
& Hudson in collaboration with the Martin Parr
Foundation on May 19 at £504 Missionaries
sing songs
of praise on
Blackpool’s
Golden Mile.
By Paddy
Summerfield,
c 19765 At a branch of
B&Q in Newport,
a man picks out
Action Man
wallpaper for his
son’s bedroom.
By Paul Reas,
198845