Street & Studio: An Urban History of Photography

Tate Modern, May 22-August 31

At first glance, this exhibition appears to be based on a simple pretext: a comparison of "found" and "constructed" photographs. But the curators have given it an urban focus by restricting the "found" element to portraiture from cities around the world.

The aim is to highlight the crossovers between these genres and their influences on each other. If you consider the way in which different types of photography are pigeon-holed, celebrated and damned, Street & Studio looks quite radical.

As Henri Cartier-Bresson famously said, good photographers attempt to capture a "decisive moment" that aesthetically communicates the essence of the subject. Constructing an image in a studio, some say, is anathema to this worthy ideal. Studio-based work, particularly fashion, has always suffered from poor-relation status, and many consider it something artists do to pay the rent. Street & Studio seeks to challenge this assumption.

With more than 300 images on show, this is a large exhibition. And the line-up of photographers is broad, featuring Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Cecil Beaton, Erwin Blumenfeld, Francis Alÿs and Cindy Sherman, among others. The curators examine the established codes of street and studio—through books and magazines, as well as the images—and how they were flouted and challenged throughout the years. But they also examine the shift from the appeal of everyday life to a cultural obsession with celebrity, asking what it is we want photography to do.

The long-fought battle to establish photography as a fine art has essentially been won. But people still have different ideas about what constitutes a significant work of art. What Street & Studio promises is to treat the spectacular and the everyday with the same intellectual rigour, and to go beyond any commercial or conceptual formula.

Jim Campbell  

The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld/Dacs, London