+ About the work

This iconic photograph captures a turbulent period in British history, a time of social deprivation and instability. This is Britain seen through the lens of a female artist whose visual humanism finds parallels in the work of the celebrated neo-realist film-maker Fellini. Karen, is a punk Melancholia and like in Dürer’s masterpiece, the young woman is the center of her own world radiating an indifferent defiance.

A classic work of British photography.

+ About the artist

Tish Murtha (1956 – 2013) was one of the most significant photographers documenting Britain and her work is now gaining the recognition it so highly deserves. Her seminal work was deemed controversial at the time, her exhibitions Juvenile Jazz Bands (1979) and Youth Unemployment (1981) were raised as a subject of debate in the House of Commons. The critic Sean O’Hagan pays tribute to Tish Murtha’s work: “… defiance is there in her best work, quietly simmering behind her tender gaze and, in retrospect, providing a subtly subversive counterpoint to the predominately male perspective that defined the new British documentary approach of the time.”