Study Room resource: Culture and identity in photography

Prints and drawings, including fashion illustrations, architectural drawings, design drawings, watercolours, posters and much more, not on display in the galleries, can be seen in the Prints & Drawings Study Room. To make it easier for teachers and lecturers to access the most popular material with groups, we have developed themed Study Room resources which contain original prints and drawings.

This Study Room resource contains photographs that deal with issues of cultural identity. It explores the work of black, Asian and Middle Eastern photographers and of white photographers who have worked in cultures other than their own. The selection was compiled by Clare Van Loenen, Keeper of Art at Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery during a Sharing Millennium Skills Secondment to the V&A.

The text contains comments drawn from audio interviews with Professor Stuart Hall (Cultural Theorist), Mark Sealy (Curator, Autograph, Association of Black Photographers) and Carol Tulloch (Archives and Museum of Black Heritage, Brixton).

Print Room Box 16

The images referenced below appear in the study room resources but are unavailable to be shown on the website due to copyright issues. All the photographs can be found in the Prints & Drawings Study Room, Print Room Box 16.

'Farmer's Son With His Nursemaid' by David Goldblatt, 1964. Museum no. E.12-1992
David Goldblatt discovered the stories of Herman Charles Bosman (1905-51) in the 1960s. They were set in the Marico Bushveld in the Transvaal and told of 'the lives of the Afrikaner bushveld farmers, their black workers and much of what came of that potent mix'. In getting an assignment to record the lives of the Afrikaners in this area, Goldblatt 'found out that (Bosman's) stories were not only true to life, but true to fact', with many of his characters being based on individuals in the community.

The farm in the picture is where Bosman taught, and the boy is his landlady's grandson. The intimacy of the boy with his nursemaid is most evident in the way her hand clasps his heel, suggesting both affectionate control and protection. Twenty years later, photographer Robert Taylor voiced the question,

'I'd love to know whether there was any hope or reason for these people to have a connection that was even as remotely as relaxed and accepting as that one?'

The apartheid system would have deemed such intimacy in adulthood as a criminal offence.

Goldblatt uses a clear, uncomplicated image to unravel some of the complexities of 1960s South Africa. Mark Haworth-Booth, writing of this photograph, notes the 'simplicity of the place, with its cement slab seat and burnt out sky, the way the capped white child stands over the bare-headed black servant, the white structure in the brown land, trust and love.'

'I needed to grasp something of what a man is and is becoming in all the particularity of himself and his bricks and bit of earth and of this place, and to contain all this in a photograph.'

'I am neither an activist nor a missionary, yet I had begun to realise an involvement with this place and the people among whom I lived that would not be stilled and that I needed to grasp and probe. I wanted to explore the specifics of our lives, not in theories but in the grit and taste and touch of things, and to bring those specifics into that particular coherence that the camera both enables and demands.' - David Goldblatt

'Nurse Midwife' by Maude Callen Eugene Smith, 1951. Museum no. PH.1056-1978

'This image comes from the essay of mine that I find the most rewarding of all my work. The nurse midwife, Maude Callen, is, to me, near the pure ideal of what a life of affirmative contribution can be. She is perhaps the most completely fulfilled person I have ever known - combining a marvellous wisdom and compassion, a strength of true humility and true pride, in a sheerly beautiful balance against insufferable odds.

The essay, without using a hammer, made a very strong point against racism by simply showing a remarkable woman doing a remarkable job in an impossible situation. And the public reacted wonderfully. To the best of my knowledge, it was the first time that a major magazine ever published a major essay on a coloured person. And I thank Life magazine for it.' - Eugene Smith

Eugene Smith began taking photographs at the age of 14, recording the time of the Kansas Dust Bowl and the Depression. He had permission from the school's principal to leave class to photograph whenever he wanted to, for example, on the approach of a dust storm.

Smith began working as a photojournalist in 1935, though his strong ideals brought him into conflict with editors and he was dismissed from a number of posts.

He was rejected from the Navy on health grounds but in 1943 became the war correspondent in the Pacific. This was thanks to the support of the photographer Edward Steichen, then the curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Smith was later severely injured and returned to New York where Life magazine re-employed him, though they were still not keen on his idealism. He finally resigned in 1955 over the restrictive editorial policy. Smith joined the Magnum photographic agency in 1955.

'I caressed every underdog who convinced me of the rightness of his situation, and many thought I was soft. But my compassion sheathes tempered steel which I do not like to unsheathe unless it becomes a question of right and responsibility.

My belief is that my responsibilities within journalism are two. My first is to my subjects. My second responsibility is to my readers. I believe that if I fulfil these two responsibilities I will automatically have fulfilled my responsibilities to the magazine.' - Eugene Smith

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 16.

'In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive and You Were Full of Joy' by Lorna Simpson, 1991. Museum no. E.382-1992
The female figure in this image is portrayed in an anonymous documentary style, reminiscent of institutional photographs. This approach highlights the artist's views regarding society's indifference to the value and needs of the individual. This impression of alienation is reinforced by the text on the left, which refers to quota systems and American federal policies regarding minorities.

'I interject these things that the photograph would not speak of and that I felt needed to be revealed, but that couldn't be absorbed from just looking at an image.' - Lorna Simpson

In Lorna Simpson's work there is a refusal of recognition. Most of her images have the models with their backs turned or viewed from the top of their heads. The images don't look you in the eye, they are not trying to engage you subjectively, they want you to recognise something about the image which is not easily accessible in that way. The use of text is an important part of the whole construction of the image. The text doesn't square up to the image. It is itself a kind of puzzle, another layer of meaning which instead of clarifying the meaning of the image makes it more puzzling.

'She is a cerebral photographer, though the impact of her images is very sensuous. They are not highly coloured but they draw you into a gloom, a deep shade which runs counter to their logical, objective, rather scientific observational approach.' - Stuart Hall

Lorna Simpson is an African-American artist who trained at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work uses elements of metaphor, biography and portraiture to examine issues relating to her own experiences as a black woman. In this she employs the narrative mode that is part of the tradition of African-American art.

She often combines images of black people, their faces rarely shown, with a provocative text in order to question the philosophical and social discourses that inform sexual and racial difference. These combinations of text and image require the viewer to meet the artist half way in the interpretation of her frequently enigmatic creations. The viewer thus becomes an active participant in the work, made to examine the images through a projection of cultural prejudices. Yet, while addressing issues in a confrontational manner, the artist maintains a detachment from her subject matter.

'Sitting on a Stoop With a Baby' by Roy DeCarava, 1950. Museum no. E.277-1999
The photograph is Roy DeCarava's illustration for The Sweet Flypaper of Life, a book written by Langston Hughes in 1955. The text evocatively describes Harlem at that time.

'It's too bad there's no front porches in Harlem:
Almost nothing except stoops to set on
Or steps
Or doorways to lean in
And in the summertime, maybe a vacant lot
But almost everywhere there's something to set on or lean on,
Somebody is setting or leaning'

The book is about life in Harlem, as seen through the eyes of Mary Bradley. She is a fictional grandmother, with a wayward son and a much-loved grandchild that she cares for. The poem is directed at St Peter, heaven's gatekeeper, and is meant to persuade him that there is much she still has to do and enjoy about life. She wants to stay and see the genuine integration of different races, rather than when, 'The rush hour in the subway mixes everybody - white, black, Gentile, Jew - closer than you ever are to your relatives'.

'(Roy DeCarava's work shows) a shift from the early interest in the documentary image, with African-Caribbean artists bringing into visibility the social life of black communities who had previously not been considered worthy of being recorded.

(His) approach is almost modernist, conversational, relaxed and not seeking that unique event. He is not driven by events, but is nosing about with his camera, catching people unawares… His exquisite control of the shades of light - there are no whites, just tones between dark black and pale grey - captures the light of urban situations. DeCarava is the visual equivalent of jazz improvisers, like Coltrane.' - Stuart Hall

Roy DeCarava is the first African-Caribbean artist to be awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. He has spent much of his working life recording the Harlem community in which he was born. Like Henri Cartier-Bresson, he uses a hand-held, 35mm camera and believes that the man in the street is the vital embodiment of human values and cultures.

Edward Steichen, an influential curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, supported DeCarava's career and included his work in the popular Family of Man exhibition that toured internationally in the 1950s.

'She Loved to Breathe - Pure Silence' by Zarina Bhimji, 1987. Museum no. PH.7208:1-1987

'I want to create and communicate new meanings by bringing Indian language, objects, memories, dreams, conversations from East African and Indian backgrounds - as well as my experience of western culture - to play in between two realities. When text is used - that is typeface, hand script, size and texture - it is as carefully considered as the image and treated as a vehicle through which meanings are suggested.' - Zarina Bhimji

This series of photographs recalls the immigration procedures for Asian women entering the UK in the 1970s. Bhimji uses them to connect thoughts about divisive legal controls and the place of gender in identity issues. A doctor's glove is captured beneath the Perspex of one of the images. It will gradually deteriorate until perhaps in time it will just be a dusty memory of the original object and the act it symbolises.

Recurring objects in Bhimji's photographic series - shoes, hair or a dead bird - are often abandoned or removed from their rightful place. The presence of these items is both symbolic and metaphoric. Images and texts are printed onto a fabric that 'becomes almost like a skin' and brings the actual work closer to the artist's own sense of identity.

The work is not only about virginity tests. It is a reminder of what life can be outside the gallery walls. The quotations below are from the Guardian.

1 February 1979 'Immigrant women are subjected to intimate gynaecological examination on entry into Britain.'

1 February 1979 'He was wearing rubber gloves and took some medicine out of a tube and put it on some cotton and inserted it into me. He said he was deciding whether I was pregnant now or ever had been pregnant before.'

7 February 1979 'Since when has virginity become a pre-condition of entry into this country?'

7 February 1979 'The tests were a crude way of keeping out Indian immigrants now that the British Government does not need Asian labour any more.'

10 February 1979 'How long would these abuses have continued if one woman had not been courageous enough to give evidence needed to pin down rumours which have been current for years?'

10 February 1979 'Port and High Commission medical officers are shown to be involved in matters of policing which are not written into their public health duties.

23 March 1979 'The government has admitted a charge that 34 Indian women who wanted to settle in Britain were given virginity tests.'

Zarina Bhimji came to Britain from Uganda aged 11, after Idi Amin's purges of the Asian community there in 1974. She studied photography in London, at Goldsmiths College and the Slade, and has remained in the city.

'I think what I do sometimes is to confuse memory with fantasy. And sometimes the fantasy becomes the memory, and by acting it out or combining the two it becomes something else.' - Zarina Bhimji

'Untitled' by Jananne Al-Ani, 1996. Museum no. E.2291-1997

'In this photograph, a portrait of myself, my mother and my three sisters, we are simultaneously revealed and concealed by the veil. This plays on conventional ideas about the relationship of power between the observer and the observed.

I have always photographed my family and in this picture we are seated in order of age starting with the youngest on the right. The picture is one of a pair in which the order of veiling is reversed. Depending on which way the photograph is read, left to right, as with English script, or right to left as with Arabic script, the women are either revealed or concealed by the veil. At the same time, by allowing the lower halves of the sitters to be seen in western clothing, in contrast to the veiled heads, the image is exposed as a set-up.

I have been exploring a number of ideas that have emerged from studying the representations and descriptions of Middle Eastern woman by late 19th and early 20th century European photographers, travellers and writers. I am especially interested in the studio portraits, which range from the ethnographic to the pornographic, and the theatrical use of backdrops, props and costumes in the construction of fantastic tableaux exploring the western fascination with the veil.'  - Jananne Al-Ani

'Her own contemporary work is an exploration of what one could call a collaborative and mutual gaze, a dialogue, which not only interrogates the past, but also examines the present. She looks closely not only at the ways in which photography has contributed to western notions of "the other" but also at our contemporary fascination with the meanings and nuances of the photographic image.'  - Val Wilmer

Jananne Al-Ani was born in northern Iraq to an Arabic father and an Irish mother. She arrived in Britain in 1980 with her mother and three sisters. Her work is informed by her experience of being a mixed-race woman, growing up in the Middle East and moving to Britain at the age of 13, and by her extremely close relationship with her mother and three sisters. The Gulf War, in 1991, brought her face to face with the issues of her own cultural identity. The concerns that are at the heart of differences between East and West are the ones that interest her and inform her work.

'Pastoral Interlude' by Ingrid Pollard, 1986. Museum no. E.722-1993

'It's as if the black experience is only lived within an urban environment. I thought I liked the Lake District, where I wandered lonely as a black face in a sea of white. A visit to the countryside is always accompanied by a feeling of unease, dread.'

'I don't mind being labelled a black photographer, but I do not like people who use labels to ghettoise practitioners. I see myself as a representative of a world majority culture. I may have a fixed idea of my place and identity but this changes depending on the context I am placed in by others. That flux is fascinating and a major concern in my work. However, it is scary at the same time.'  - Ingrid Pollard

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 16.