80s Photography from the Collection

The decade of the 1980s was a pivotal period for the medium of photography if only for the plurality of styles and approaches it witnessed. Listed below are just a few of the artistic and broader concerns with which photography dealt during the decade.
 
The shock of the new color photography of the 1970s turned into broad acceptance and use of this alternative to the traditional black-and-white technique.
 
The widespread employment by professionals and laypeople alike of the Polaroid Land camera radically changed the relationship between creator and the process.
 
The appearance of the Sony Betacam in 1982 put the ability to capture and eventually edit the moving image into the hands of many.
 
The competing tendencies of conceptualism and narrativity pulled artists in different directions.
 
The conservative politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher encouraged many artists to take a stronger stand on the politics of culture and particularly in the areas of bodily representation and artistic self-representation.
 
It was also during the 1980s that the Tampa Museum of Art made its most significant foray into collecting contemporary photography. This exhibition offers up a variety of the works created during the decade. In organizing this show, we have purposefully withheld the imposition of a sweeping generalization or narrative about the decade; rather, this exhibition provides a host of opportunities for exploration into a decade that for many of us seems like only yesterday, whereas for others it is truly of another century.
 
 

Image:

Cindy Sherman  (American, born 1954)
Untitled (#141), 1986
Dye destruction – Cibachrome, Edition 6 of 6
Tampa Museum of Art. Bequest of Edward W. Lowman by exchange 1989.42