The Real in the
Twentieth-Century Photograph
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 engagement and estrangement features in each work on display,
from August Sander’s remarkable study of the German people in the early
part of the century, to Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s recent photographs of
revealing city street scenes. Garry Winogrand observed: There is nothing
as mysterious as a fact clearly described. For the photographers in
Cruel and Tender this means looking at the real world around us and
avoiding idealised or fantastical imagery.
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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The Real in the
Twentieth-Century Photograph
Sponsored by UBS
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Exhibition Organisation
This major exhibition is a collaboration between Tate Modern and
Museum Ludwig, Cologne. The exhibition is curated by Emma Dexter,
Senior Curator, Tate Modern and Thomas Weski, until recently Chief
Curator, Museum Ludwig. The exhibition will be on view at Museum
Ludwig
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Exhibition Sponsor
The exhibition is sponsored by UBS, one of the world’s leading
financial firms. This sponsorship continues UBS’s support of
contemporary exhibitions at Tate and follows their sponsorship of
Warhol and Lucian Freud in 2002. UBS is a pre-eminent global
integrated investment services provider and the leading corporate and
retail bank in Switzerland. UBS is the world’s leading provider of
private banking services and one of the largest asset managers
globally. In investment banking and securities they are among the
select bracket of major global houses.
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