Page 15 - 50.La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

Cruel and Tender

From Walker Evans and August Sander to Andreas Gursky and Diane Arbus, many of
the greatest photographers of the twentieth century have worked in the documentary

manner. Cruel and Tender is the first major photography exhibition at Tate Modern
and the first to explore this realist vein in depth. Many iconic images of the twentieth
century come from this tradition and are included among the portraits, interiors,

landscapes and cityscapes on display in the exhibition.

Cruel and Tender includes the work of Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Lewis Baltz, Bernd

and Hilla Becher, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Rineke Dijkstra, William Eggleston, Walker
Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Paul Graham, Andreas Gursky, Boris Mikhailov,
Nicholas Nixon, Martin Parr, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Thomas Ruff, August Sander,

Michael Schmidt, Fazal Sheikh, Stephen Shore, Thomas Struth, and Garry Winogrand.

Described by some as straight photography, this work is characterised by a sense
of disengagement; it is analytical and descriptive in its approach to society and the
landscape. At the same time, this kind of photography also demonstrates a concern for

subject matter. Lincoln Kirstein, in 1933, identified this paradox of seeming opposites
when he described Walker Evans’s work as ‘tender cruelty’. This oscillation between
WALKER EVANS
INTERIOR DETAIL, WEST VIRGINIA engagement and estrangement features in each work on display, from August
COAL MINER’S HOUSE 1935
(PRINTED LATER ) Sander’s remarkable study of the German people in the early part of the century,
GELATIN SILVER PRINT
225 X 181 MM to Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s recent photographs of revealing city street scenes. Garry
CREDIT: THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART WALKER EVANS
NEW YORK © THE WALKER EVANS ARCHIVE SUBWAY PORTRAIT 1941 PRINTED 1965 Winogrand observed: There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described. For
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
GELATIN SILVER PRINT the photographers in Cruel and Tender this means looking at the real world around
12 X 17.9 CM
CREDIT: THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM, LOS ANGELES us and avoiding idealised or fantastical imagery.
© THE WALKER EVANS ARCHIVE
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
Cruel and Tender includes many familiar images which have shaped the way we look
at the world. Walker Evans’s American Photographs launched a host of images which

conflated the mythic and the mundane in American life: the automobile graveyard,
the small town grocery store, torn movie posters and clapboard houses. Influenced by

Evans, Stephen Shore gives us delicious candy-coloured depictions of quintessential
American highways, cinemas and diners. These works are offset by William Eggleston’s
angst-riddenand existential images of affluent suburbia and its inhabitants. These

celebrated images are displayed wherever possible within the context of their
original bodies of work, enabling a greater understanding of the working practices

of individual photographers.
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