British artist Ingrid Pollard's work is set to be showcased in an exhibition at London's Tate Britain, featuring photography from the 1980s. Pollard is keen to reconnect with some of her subjects from that era. In 1989, she was invited to Tulse Hill School in the south London borough of Lambeth to photograph the students. Thirty-five years later, these portraits will be displayed in one of the city's most renowned galleries, and Pollard has appealed for the boys in the photos to contact her. A year after Pollard took the photos, Tulse Hill School closed, making these images not only portraits of teenage boys from that time but also a final record of the school. The boys are likely now in their 40s and 50s. "I've often, more recently, wondered what they're doing now, if they're still in south London. They might be elsewhere in the UK or even abroad," she told the BBC. "If we find some of the boys, they might recall people's names. They could still be friends," Pollard suggested. "I did ask their English teacher, but she doesn't remember."

This is the first time this set of images will be featured in a major gallery exhibition from Pollard, who was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2022. Born in Guyana in 1953, Pollard is renowned for her photography documenting Black British life, for which she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for her services to art. Her work will be exhibited alongside 70 other photographers in Tate Britain's upcoming exhibition 'The 80s: Photographing Britain'. Running from 21 November 2024 to 5 May 2025, the exhibition chronicles the "tumultuous" Margaret Thatcher years through nearly 350 images. This includes works from "John Davies' post-industrial landscapes to Tish Murtha's portraits of youth unemployment in Newcastle". The exhibition captures some of the most significant moments of the decade, such as the miners' strikes, the conflict in Northern Ireland, and the era's anti-racism demonstrations. The impact of Section 28 and the AIDS epidemic are also featured in the works of Tessa Boffin, Sunil Gupta, Grace Lau, Ajamu X, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Rotimi Fani-Kayode.

For Pollard, this exhibition is significant as it highlights photos of many ordinary Black teenage boys who were overlooked by the artistic establishment at the time. "They had certainly not been photographed that way before," she said.

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