Dusseldorf School of Photography

What is the place of documentary photography in art? This is the central question raised by Tate's first major exhibition devoted to photography, which includes an axis of the most highly acclaimed American and German image-makers of the past century. Carter Ratcliff looks at the evolution of a photographic practice that occupies the troublesome borderland between hard fact and enigmatic contingency.

Bernd and Hilla Becher have spent their life together photographing the unintended beauty that can be found in industrial structures. Michael Collins profiles the winners of 2002’s prestigious erasmus prize for European culture.