Tony Ray-Jones, Science Museum Group collection Beachy Head Tripper Boat, Tony Ray-Jones, 1967

British photographer Tony Ray-Jones (1941–1972) is best known for his project A Day Off, which portrays the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the English way of life. His photographs are imbued with warmth and humour, catching his subjects relaxed and off-guard.

Ray-Jones’ work sits within a larger tradition of photographs of Britons at leisure, starting with Sir Benjamin Stone in the 19th century and later including Paul Martin and Homer Sykes among others. His unique compositions have in turn influenced a later generation of photographers that most notably includes Chris Killip and Martin Parr.

Tony Ray-Jones was born in 1941 and spent his childhood in London. After an initial tenure at the London School of Printing, he moved to America to study photography at Yale University. At Yale he found that photography was taken seriously as an art form and as a tool for personal artistic expression. In America he met and took inspiration from a range of influential practitioners including designer Alexey Brodovitch and photographers Joel Meyerowitz and Garry Winogrand. They introduced him to the then-new form of ‘street’ photography, which had a profound effect on his practise. On his return to the UK, Ray-Jones began using a similar approach to document the English at their leisure, and developed a particular interest in the English seaside.

He returned to the United States in 1971 to teach photography but was diagnosed with leukaemia shortly after his arrival. Tragically, Ray-Jones died in 1972 at the age of 31.

Dr Harold (Eugene) Edgerton, © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Science Museum Group collection Jack of Diamonds playing card hit by a .30 calibre bullet, Harold Edgerton, 1970

Dr Harold Edgerton (1903–1990) is famous for his split-second photographs, which reveal actions that are too fast for the human eye to see.

Edgerton was the first photographer to use stroboscopic lighting to capture rapid movement. He became famous for his dramatic photographs of falling milk drops and speeding bullets. He found that the stroboscope could illuminate a subject through repeated and rapid bursts of light. His photographs presented views of high-speed motion for the first time and became popular with the public.

© Don McCullin/Contact/nbpictures, Science Museum Group collection Bradford, Don McCullin, 1970s

Don McCullin (1935–) is a British photojournalist with an international reputation for hard-hitting photographs taken in war zones and other areas of conflict. From 1966 to 1984 he worked with the Sunday Times Magazine and covered various nationally and internationally important events, including the Vietnam War, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the African HIV/AIDS epidemic.

McCullin is also known for his compassionate and powerful photographs of unemployed and impoverished members of British society. These photographs, taken over a 50-year period, bear witness to McCullin’s anger at a system in which compels some people to live in acute poverty and deprivation. An exhibition of McCullin’s work from Britain, drawing from his books Homecoming (1979) and In England (2007), was shown at this museum in summer 2009. Also titled In England, the exhibition contained many images taken in Bradford in the 1970s. Shocked by the hardships and distress he found in the city, McCullin produced a series of images which still resonate today. This photograph, simply titled Bradford, is a testament to the longevity of the social and racial troubles which the city still endures.

Living and working in Somerset, McCullin now concentrates on landscape photography.

Chris Killip, Science Museum Group collection Youth on Wall, Jarrow, Tyneside, Chris Killip, 1976

Chris Killip (1946–) is known for his powerful and moving black and white photographs, which chronicle industrial decline in the north-east of England in the late 1970s and 1980s.

The series from which this photograph is drawn was published in the book In Flagrante (1988). In Flagrante has been described as one of the most important photography books of the 1980s, on account of the impactful and resonant nature of the photographs. It is generally regarded as an important record of life in the north-east of England during the Thatcher years. Characterised by high levels of unemployment brought on by policies of deindustrialisation, the period was a dramatic era in social history. An acute sense of melancholy pervades Killip’s photographs: they are careful personal observations rather than calls to action. Killip’s work helped to establish the now-familiar tradition of documentary photography located in the context of fine art.

Fay Godwin, Science Museum Group collection Heptonstall backlit, Yorkshire, Fay Godwin, 1978

Fay Godwin (1931–2005) is regarded as one of Britain’s finest landscape photographers. She is known for her black and white photographs, which reflect the diverse and changing nature of the British landscape. She possessed a special ability to portray the essential characteristics of land, sea and sky. Her work often draws attention to the detrimental effect that past and present generations have had on the natural environment, which she increasingly began to portray as polluted and inaccessible as her work progressed.

Sensitive, subtly political and unsentimental, her work was published in several books, the most influential of which was Land (1985). Land featured photographs taken over a ten-year period, many of which were taken while Godwin was in receipt of a major Arts Council grant that she had been awarded in 1978.

In 1987 Godwin was awarded the Bradford Fellowship, hosted jointly by this museum, Bradford College and the University of Bradford. During the term of her fellowship, Godwin’s experiments with colour photography culminated in the exhibition Bradford in Colour.

A subsequent book, Our Forbidden Land, was published in 1990. In it, Godwin focused on the environmental damage caused by road builders, developers, the forestry industry and the Ministry of Defence.

This photograph, Heptonstall backlit, Yorkshire 1978, illustrates her masterful use of light and shade and striking compositional ability. This, along with a full range of mid-tones, creates an evocative scene and emphasises the enormity of the Yorkshire landscape.

John Davies, Science Museum Group collection Agecroft Power Station, Salford, John Davies, 1983

John Davies (1949–) is a prolific, internationally recognised photographer, famous for his striking black and white images of both urban and rural landscapes.

Because he records the effects of industrialisation on the landscape, Davies has often been described as a political photographer. Incongruous elements are often present in his work: industrial buildings in rural settings or ancient buildings flanked by flyovers. These contrasts emphasise the effects of development and how these structures are put to different uses over time. In this photograph, the landscape is dominated by the colliery and its close neighbour the power station, whose four huge cooling towers occupy the middle distance. Behind the towers, pylons stand as evidence of the transition from coal to electricity.

Taken during the Thatcher era, only a year before Agecroft miners participated in the National Union of Mineworkers strike in 1984–85, this photograph shows the effect of the industry on the landscape. In the foreground are typical Sunday league football pitches, and adjacent is detritus—abandoned cars and other litter. A tethered horse completes the melancholic scene.

© Paul Graham, Science Museum Group collection Woman in Headscarf, DHSS Waiting Room, Bristol from the series ‘Beyond Caring’, Paul Graham, 1984

Paul Graham (1956–) is best known for his groundbreaking colour documentary work in the 1980s. His series Beyond Caring, from which this image is drawn, depicts the offices of the Department of Health and Social Security and was published as a book in 1985. The great theme of the decade, particularly in the north of England, was poverty and deindustrialisation. The dismantling of the mining industry and resultant strikes was the dominant story.

Graham was the first person to make significant use of colour in social documentary photography. Documentary photography had been dominated by black and white, with colour mainly confined to advertising and domestic work. Graham’s use of colour as a tool for personal expression in social documentary photography transformed British photography and remains influential today.

Martin Parr, Science Museum Group collection From ‘The Last Resort’, Martin Parr, 1985

British photographer Martin Parr (1952–) is one of the most significant artists in the modern history of photography. His extensive body of work has brought him fame and made a deep impression on those who have followed in his wake. Parr is famous for his unorthodox, often humorous style and his interest in mass tourism, consumerism and globalisation. His work is frequently perceived as being critical of England and the English and as such is often received with ambivalence, regardless of its impact on the medium and obvious quality,

A member of Magnum Photos, Parr works with brash colour to portray a world apparently full of vulgarity and wastefulness. His first large-scale project was The Last Resort, a series of photographs of the run-down seaside resort of New Brighton on the Wirral. Published as a book in 1986 and exhibited widely, The Last Resort became notorious for its shocking, garishly colourful portrayal of modern society.

The Last Resort is an uncompromising project that turned an unforgiving spotlight on Thatcher’s Britain and prompted questions about the depth of the divides within British society. This photograph, drawn from the series, shows two small children with ice creams dribbling down their hands, faces and clothes. Their messy appearance implies careless and neglectful parenting, further emphasised by the way they’re positioned alone on the kerb.

Nick Knight, Science Museum Group collection Suzie Smoking, Nick Knight, 1988

Internationally celebrated British fashion photographer Nick Knight (1958–) is known for his challenges to conventional ideals of beauty and for his work on magazines including British and French Vogue, Dazed and Confused and i-D, He was also the picture editor of the latter title for ten years.

Knight has published several books of his photographs and been featured by prestigious institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Saatchi Gallery, Tate Modern, The Photographers Gallery, the Hayward Gallery and the Natural History Museum. He has produced campaigns for prominent fashion houses including Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent. In 2000 he set up the award-winning fashion website SHOWstudio.

This image, Suzie Smoking, 1988, was shot for the avant-garde Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto. Featuring the model Suzie Bick, the photograph was exhibited widely, most notably in the 1989 exhibition Out of Fashion at the Photographers Gallery, London.

Anna Fox, Science Museum Group collection From ‘Friendly Fire’, Anna Fox, 1989–1994

Anna Fox (1961–) came to prominence during the 1980s when she began producing colour photographs in a style that became known as subjective documentary. Influenced by the new colour work produced in the US in the 1970s and Britain in the 1980s, Fox’s first project Workstations: Office Life in London (1988) chronicled British office culture. Characterised by harsh flash and accompanied by satirical captions, this project was a critical look at the aggressive and competitive work politics of the 1980s and was produced in the context of other important documentarists from the period, including Paul Graham, Tom Hunter and Martin Parr.

Subsequent project Friendly Fire was undertaken from 1989 to 1994 and documented paintballing and other weekend war games. The photographs feature a variety of locations, some indoors and some outdoors. Again the images are characterised by harsh flash, which heightens the sense of irony in the work. Playing the role of war photographer, Fox satirises the motives of the participants as they attempt to foster team spirit through mock battle.

© Richard Billingham, Science Museum Group collection Untitled, Richard Billingham, 1995

Richard Billingham (1970–) was born in Birmingham. His breakthrough came following the publication of photographs he took of his family, who lived in a tower block in the city. The book Ray’s a Laugh (1996) depicted the chaotic lives of Billingham’s alcoholic father Ray, mother Liz and younger brother Jason.

The garishly-coloured, badly-focused photographs were shot using a cheap 35mm camera. They were made initially as studies for paintings while Billingham was studying fine art at the University of Sunderland. Reminiscent of family snapshots, the remarkably frank images depict a life of poverty but are tempered by moments of intimacy between Liz and Ray. In this photograph, which is at once humorous, desperate and cruel, Ray is seen throwing the family’s pet cat across the room.

Part photo-diary and part documentary, Ray’s a Laugh has received international acclaim and notoriety. It has been exhibited at many venues, including at this museum in 1996, and was part of the famous Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1997. Billingham won the prestigious Citibank Photography Prize in 1997 and was shortlisted for the Turner prize in 2001.

Hannah Starkey, Science Museum Group collection, courtesy of Maureen Paley, London Untitled, Hannah Starkey, 1997

Hannah Starkey (1971–) creates large, staged photographs which invite the viewer to speculate about the thoughts and intentions of their subjects. These enigmatic colour photographs act as dramas, often quiet and subtle, hinting at some unspoken occurrence, known only to the characters. The viewer is drawn in and encouraged to participate and hypothesise.

In Starkey’s large-scale tableaux, the subjects—usually women—are engaged in some mysterious scenario. They seem to suggest that we have stumbled across the scene by accident; the context and narrative remain elusive.

In this photograph, the main character seems to have been caught unawares, mid-daydream, contemplating a moth which has come to rest on the large mirror. She appears to be in her own world, oblivious to the presence of another woman, who watches her with apparent and unexplained malevolence.