Cruel and Tender
The Real in the Twentieth-Century Photograph, Tate Modern

Cruel and Tender is Tate Modern’s first ever large exhibition dedicated to photography and features many of the 20th Century’s biggest names including; Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Martin Parr, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Andrea Gursky and August Sandler to name a few.

The title Cruel and Tender was partly inspired by the work of Walker Evans which has been described as having a ”Tender Cruelty”. His spare and factual images of everyday American life were said to be cruel for being without emotion yet at the same time tender for the interest and compassion they invoke in the viewer. Therefore the criteria for the exhibition meant that no images could be overly sentimental or nostalgic.

There’s no shortage of the ordinary in the exhibition. Thomas Ruff’s work concentrates on some of Dusseldorf’s most bleak and uninspiring buildings with a distinct lack of human presence or influence on the structures. The images are shown alongside his enlarged passport photographs on brightly coloured backgrounds. In typical passport fashion, the subject’s poses are awkward and expressionless, showing no hint of emotion. From Ruff’s un-ambitous architecture we are led into Thomas Struth’s work on big cities. Frantic shots of an ever-evolving Shanghai and a busy shopping district in Tokyo are hung alongside static and peaceful family portraits. One such portrait is that of The Smith Family of Fife, Scotland. Taken in 1989, the eye is drawn not only to the uncomfortable body language of each family member, but also the fashion of the time; ill fitting jumpers, mullet haircuts and a thick moustache leave the viewer pitying the whole set-up.

The family theme features in many of the exhibits; Nicholas Nixon’s ‘The Brown Sisters’ is a series of black and white images of three sisters taken each year since 1975, capturing changes in styles, self confidence and the gradual aging process. Fazal Sheik’s work features close up portraits of Somali women who have endured rape, assault and the loss of loved ones during clan warfare. There is also a stunning panoramic shot of an Afghan refugee camp in Northern Pakistan. Displayed over five canvases, the dusty landscape is a mass of tents pitched closely together as far as the eye can see. All the individuals are blurred, giving the image a seemingly matter of fact dimension which no doubt led to its inclusion in the exhibition.

Perhaps the epitome of Cruel and Tender is the work of Boris Mikhailov. In his series ‘Case History 1997-98’ he documents the homeless people of Krarkov, Russia. Mikhailov’s subjects often pose for the camera showing their ravaged bodies, exposing scars, tattoos, breasts and genitalia that show the toll of a life on the streets. Critics have accused the photographer of voyeurism and exploitation, but perhaps without these shocking exposures the photographs would long been dismissed as just another set of homeless images.

To another degree, it’s difficult to find the tenderness in Bernd and Hilla Becher’s shots of grain silos, cooling towers and Gas tanks. The same could be said of Andrea Gurskys work; his large scale photographs (often helped with a degree of digital manipulation) depict the grand scale of commerce and industry. The exhibition features five works including the ‘Chicago Board of Trade II’, an aerial shot of a busy trading floor strewn with paper chits where the people are mere blips in a mass of detail only recognisable by their bright coloured bibs.

Although it’s occasionally unclear how someone’s work made the criteria it is nevertheless impressive to see work from so many influential photographers all under one roof. Be it August Sandler’s documentation of German society in the early 1900’s, Philip Lorca Dicorcia’s stunning street photography or Martin Parr’s bright and extreme close ups, Cruel and Tender has managed to incorporate work s from a wide range of photographers old and new with varying styles. This is a welcome excursion into photography by the Tate and hopefully the first of many. PL