Photography: New Documentary Forms

This new five-room display explores the ways in which five contemporary artists have used the camera to explore, extend and question the power of photography as a documentary medium.

Consisting entirely of new acquisitions to Tate’s collection, it includes recent work by Luc Delahaye, Mitch Epstein, Guy Tillim and Akram Zaatari, as well as two important earlier works by Boris Mikhailov. Between them they cover subjects as diverse as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, studio photography in Beirut, elections in the Congo, everyday life in pre- and post-Soviet Ukraine, and power production in the United States.

Each room concerns one discrete project, in which the artist calls into question the relationship between the documentary value of photography and the museum as its proper context.

Photo:

Mitch Epstein

Biloxi, Mississippi 2005

© Mitch Epstein. Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York