Jem Southam (born 1950)
Cove Café, St Agnes from the series Paintings from the West of Cornwall
1982
C-type print
Museum no. E.314-1988
Given by Jem Southam

Jem Southam is one of a group of British photographers who began using colour in the late 1970s, partly in response to the colour work of American photographers William Eggleston and Joel Sternfeld. Here, his precise, detached style invites the viewer to scrutinise the café interior - the landscape painting on the wall, the variety of signs, the reflections on the tabletop and the way in which the wooden counter echoes the wooden picture frame.