{"id":18437,"date":"2024-04-11T10:11:24","date_gmt":"2024-04-11T10:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/?p=18437"},"modified":"2024-04-11T10:11:24","modified_gmt":"2024-04-11T10:11:24","slug":"interest-in-working-class-photography-booms-but-barriers-to-industry-remain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/18437","title":{"rendered":"Interest in working-class photography booms but barriers to industry remain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Despite films and exhibitions celebrating working-class photographers, their voices are increasingly rare today<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lanre Bakare<\/a> Arts and culture correspondent<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A<\/strong>t the end of Tish, the documentary about the photographer Tish Murtha<\/a>, one of the lingering questions posed by her daughter Ella is how did this incredibly talented artist not manage to sustain a career in photography?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Murtha, who created unparalleled portraits of working-class life in Newcastle\u2019s West End in the 1970s and 80s, has been \u201crediscovered\u201d in recent years, but her inability to make a living in her lifetime not only haunts the film but also current photography \u2013 where working-class voices are increasingly rare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPrimarily with Tish being a working-class woman and a single mother \u2013 that was the defining reason why she couldn\u2019t sustain a career,\u201d says Paul Sng, the director of Tish. \u201cIt\u2019s much harder for women to progress in the arts to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Tish<\/a>
Tish Murtha was not able to sustain a career in photography but her work has been \u2018rediscovered\u2019 in recent years. Photograph: Tish Murtha\/BBC\/Freya Films\/Demon Snapper Productions\/Ella Murtha<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, a study showed that the proportion of working-class artists had shrunk from 16.4% for those born between 1953 and 1962 to just 7.9% for those born four decades later<\/a>. The research found that people who grew up in professional families were now four times more likely<\/a> than those with working-class parents to be in creative work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sng believes that more should be done to help artists from working-class backgrounds, who might find it challenging, as Murtha did, to navigate the funding applications and institutions, such as Arts Council England, which enable artists to make a living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe should have been supported more; not everyone can write applications,\u201d says Sng. \u201cYou can use video to apply these days but there are people who don\u2019t have a mobile phone. It\u2019s still very difficult for people like Tish to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tish comes to BBC iPlayer at a time when there\u2019s a boom in interest in working-class photography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with the Murtha film there\u2019s the Bert Hardy exhibition<\/a> at the Photographers\u2019 Gallery; Leo Regan\u2019s film My Friend Lanre<\/a>, which charts the rollercoaster life of former Independent photographer Lanre Fehintola, and Johny Pitts\u2019 After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989-2024<\/a> is touring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A working-class photographer who did sustain an incredible career was Bert Hardy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hardy \u2013 who was the eldest of seven children and grew up in a working-class family in Blackfriars, London \u2013 is arguably one of the most versatile British photographers of the 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He went on night raids during the Korean war, took images from within the Belsen concentration camp but also captured celebrity engagements and shot sporting heroes such as Sugar Ray Robinson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it was his work with Picture Post, where he covered all aspects of working-class life from mining communities and rural poverty to the diversity of Cardiff\u2019s Butetown that is the most celebrated.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Two<\/a>
Hardy\u2019s work covering all aspects of working-class life for Picture Post is his most celebrated. Photograph: Bert Hardy\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Karen McQuaid, the senior curator of the Hardy show, said: \u201cHe obviously had a huge abundance of talent but also knew what to do with it and was entrepreneurial and hungry for commercial success as well as anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hardy also operated during a period where there was a proliferation of illustrated weekly magazines, such as Picture Post and Life, which had a circulation of more than 13m at its peak<\/a> \u2013 something unthinkable now or even in Murtha\u2019s era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pitts, whose exhibition features more than two dozen working-class photographers, says he wanted to give a platform to artists who sit outside the big institutions and also present a \u201cmessy\u201d image of working-class life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese artists haven\u2019t been given either a chance, haven\u2019t conformed to upper middle class notions of what good taste is, or simply haven\u2019t had the chance to build a network within that world,\u201d says Pitts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The exhibition] is not a sob story. This is, in some ways, a celebration of the tenacity of working-class photographers, but also just to show how stagnant mainstream photography has been.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/artanddesign\/2024\/apr\/11\/interest-in-working-class-photography-booms-but-barriers-to-industry-remain<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite films and exhibitions celebrating working-class photographers, their voices are increasingly rare today Lanre Bakare Arts and culture correspondent At the end of Tish, the documentary about the photographer Tish Murtha, one of the lingering questions posed by her daughter Ella is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1735,1734,1733,840,435,1673,16,1251,1732],"class_list":["post-18437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1","tag-arts","tag-career","tag-class","tag-council","tag-guardian","tag-murtha","tag-photography","tag-support","tag-working"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18438,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18437\/revisions\/18438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}