Tate | Young Tate: Exam Help: Lens Based Media

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Lens Based Media

The documentary qualities of lens-based images make photography, film and video ideal media for artists exploring social and political concerns.

The straight-forward appearance of Willie Doherty’s black and white photograph The Bridge (1992) mimics photojournalism. The bridge in the photograph is a connection point between divided Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland.

Other artists have intentionally adopted the slick approaches seen in Hollywood films and magazine photographs to put across their message.

Using the style of film-stills and glamour photographs Cindy Sherman turns the lens on herself to highlight the way women are often stereo-typed in films and in the media. Tracey Moffatt adopts the style of glossy magazine photographs in her powerful images about bullying and abuse. She juxtaposes the photographs with stark caption texts.

Artists often use themselves or their own lives to explore identity in their work.

Nan Goldin’s intimate photographs of her close friends appear almost as a photographic diary.

While Sonia Boyce uses humble passport photographs of herself in From Tarzan to Rambo… (1987). Blown up to a huge cinema screen scale the work addresses the relationship between her self-image and the one presented by the predominantly white media.