'The 80s: Photographing Britain': Mitra Tabrizian
DACS’ new blog series, Image in Focus, celebrates the creative processes of our artist members. The series begins by highlighting artists featured in the exhibition The 80s: Photographing Britain opening today at Tate Britain. This show traces the work of a diverse community of photographers, collectives, and publications, showcasing radical responses to the turbulent Thatcher years.
In our first blog, Mitra Tabrizian shares insights about her work The Blues, which is featured in the exhibition. Created in the late 1980s, The Blues explores themes of race, identity, and representation, drawing on postcolonial theory and the aesthetics of American crime movie posters.
The Blues was part of my postgraduate project while I was studying for an MPhiL under Victor Burgin’s supervision. I was inspired by post-colonial theories, in particular the work of Stuart Hall and Homi Bhabha, on race and representation, I wanted to deviate from the usual representation of positive or negative images, and produce an alternative, which may raise more questions than answers, which is difficult to achieve! This required using some kind of text on the image. So Homi Bhabha’s use of the text here is a great contribution as it alludes to some of the issues without being didactic.
Created in collaboration with Andy Golding, the title The Blues is used as a metaphor signifying the black voice - as a voice of resistance. The work uses the codes of movie posters as a popular form, to construct in each ‘untold story’, a critical moment in the confrontation between black and white. What the black man is confronting is the status of ‘whiteness’! The blue colour is also an integral part of the mise-en-scene of crime movies. No matter what position he is put in; under police interrogation, in prison, in a low paid job, being an ‘invader’; the black man questions the white man’s identity. Yet the black voice remains predominately a black man’s voice. So, the work begins with the confrontation between men and ends with the encounter between the black woman and the black man.
I’ve always been interested in the ‘disenfranchised’, not as the victim (i.e. the usual representation), but focusing on their resilience as it’s portrayed in The Blues. So, what we might call the ‘crisis of contemporary culture’ seems to be the running theme in my work; raising difficult questions at different times.
I’m pleased that The Blues, despite being made in the late 80s, still seems relevant and of interest. But when it was first exposed, I received a lot of criticism that the work is confusing, that it doesn’t have a clear idea - and some were critical, claiming that I’m not qualified or not ‘black enough’ to make work about the ‘black experience’! It was only later on that Stuart Hall wrote about it, that the work received legitimacy.
DACS licensed the work of artist member Mitra Tabrizian for the catalogue of the exhibition 'The 80s: Photographing Britain' at Tate Britain.
About Mitra Tabrizian
Mitra Tabrizian is an Iranian/British artist and filmmaker. Her photographic work has been exhibited and published widely and is represented in major international museums and public collections. Solo museum shows include Tate Britain (2008). She has exhibited at the Venice Biennale (2015); is recipient of the Royal Academy’s Rose Award for Photography (2013) – and the Royal Photographic Society ‘Honorary Fellowship’ (2021). Her critically acclaimed debut feature Gholam (British/Iranian film, 2018) had a successful theatrical release in the UK. She is currently developing her second feature The Far Mountains with BFI.
Read more
- Browse more of Mitra’s work on Artimage
- How to join DACS
- What is licensing?
