Journeys through the Tate Collection

Lionel Wendt, [title not known]  c.1933–6

Lionel Wendt, [title not known]  c.1933–8

Lionel Wendt, [title not known]  c.1933–8

Lionel Wendt, Untitled  c.1933–8

Wendt is considered one of Asia’s earliest modern photographers. He was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) to a prominent family. Travelling to Europe in 1919 to study law, he encountered experimental music, visual art and literature. He kept up-to-date with developments in European modern art – including surrealism – on his return to Colombo in 1924. But instead of reproducing modernist conventions in his photographs, Wendt used what he had gained in Europe to convey the richness of Sri Lankan contemporary life and traditions.

Gallery label, October 2016

Zarina Hashmi, Letters from Home  2004

This series of prints is based on letters written by the artist’s sister who lived in Pakistan. Lines of handwritten prose in Urdu are overlaid and obscured with maps and blueprints of distant homes and places. The letters mark significant moments – the death of a parent, for instance – and some of the prints bear impressions of places relevant to their estranged lives. Hashmi maps and conveys the experience of loss and dispossession due to political conflict. The break with the Urdu literary culture of undivided India is poignant for the artist who was born in Aligarh, a university town and centre of learning.

Gallery label, April 2013

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Remain, Thriving  2018

Made for Brixton Underground station, this scene imagines a gathering of the grandchildren of the ‘Windrush generation’ who moved to Britain following the 1948 British Nationality Act. The patterned walls, radiogram and hanging pictures are reminiscent of ‘front rooms’ they may associate with their grandparents. The wall imagery derives from photography in Brixton’s Black Cultural Archives, Including portraits of Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson and activist Olive Morris. The scene is not simply celebratory: 2018 news of the Windrush scandal’s deportation of commonwealth citizens plays on television.

Gallery label, January 2022

Ellsworth Kelly, Broadway  1958

This painting, one of a series that developed from a small black and white study, is called after the famous avenue in New York. Here the red form can also be read as a 'broad way' receding into the distance, Kelly having cropped the edges of the rectangle to imply perspective. At the same time it appears absolutely flat. Asserting the real, flat nature of painting has been one of Kelly's central concerns. He achieves this here without sacrificing effects of space. The picture plane suggests at once flatness and three dimensions. Other works in the series are titled Wall after New York's Wall Street and 'North River,' another name for New York's Hudson River.

Gallery label, September 2004

György Kepes, Cone, Prism, Rock  c.1939–40

This is one of a large group of photograms and studies in modernist photography in Tate’s collection by the Hungarian-born photographer, painter, designer, teacher and writer, Gyorgy Kepes (see Tate P80532–P80568, T13973–T13975). They date from 1938 to the early 1940s and were made in the United States, where Kepes had emigrated in 1937. Kepes made his earliest photograms in Budapest, taking nature as his starting point, directly recording the process without a camera onto photosensitized surfaces. In the late 1920s Kepes joined the Berlin studio of the Hungarian artist and modernist photographer László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946). Moholy-Nagy had been a teacher at the Bauhaus School in Germany and was one of the principals in promoting the values of the Bauhaus movement, as well as a pioneer who experimented with a multitude of materials and techniques. Kepes was introduced to the ‘new vision’ provided by the possibilities of modern art techniques while collaborating alongside Moholy-Nagy. He began to experiment with photograms himself – photographic prints made in the darkroom by placing objects directly onto light sensitive paper and exposing the paper to light. Later, he made prints he called ‘photo-drawings’, in which he applied paint to a glass plate that he then used as though it were a negative. Only a few of Kepes’s works from this earlier period survived the artist’s many moves in the 1930s and the Second World War.

Bruce Onobrakpeya, Jesus is laid in the tomb  1969

This is one in a series by Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya comprising fourteen linocut prints on paper in an elongated landscape format. The subject is a biblical one, with each of the prints depicting a different moment from Jesus’ last days on Earth as a man, beginning with his condemnation by Pontius Pilate and ending with his crucifixion and laying in the tomb. The episodes portrayed – known in Christian theology as The Stations of the Cross – are precisely detailed and dramatised in Onobrakpeya’s prints, but have been placed within an African setting. The apostles wear vividly patterned local Adire prints and those restraining Jesus appear to be wearing colonial-era police uniform. The overall palette of the series is blue and green, with hints of yellow and highlights in orange. Geometric shapes abound, recalling patterns found on traditional Nigerian textiles and architecture. While these forms structure the compositions, they also extend onto the crosses that feature prominently in many of the images. The prints are individually titled as follows: Jesus is Condemned to Death, Jesus Takes his Cross, Jesus Falls the First Time, Jesus Meets his Mother, Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus, Veronica Wipes Jesus’ Face, Jesus Falls the Second Time, Jesus and the Women of Jerusalem, Jesus Falls the Third Time, Jesus’ Clothes are Torn Off, Jesus is Nailed to the Cross, Jesus Dies on the Cross, Jesus is Taken from the Cross and Jesus is Laid in the Tomb. Thirteen of the prints are number eight in an edition of fifty. Jesus Falls the First Time is number eight in an edition of forty-eight. Complete sets of the prints are rare; although they can be shown individually, they are ideally shown all together as they were in the inaugural exhibition at Tate Modern, London in 2001, Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis.

Bruce Onobrakpeya, Jesus is nailed to the cross  1969

This is one in a series by Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya comprising fourteen linocut prints on paper in an elongated landscape format. The subject is a biblical one, with each of the prints depicting a different moment from Jesus’ last days on Earth as a man, beginning with his condemnation by Pontius Pilate and ending with his crucifixion and laying in the tomb. The episodes portrayed – known in Christian theology as The Stations of the Cross – are precisely detailed and dramatised in Onobrakpeya’s prints, but have been placed within an African setting. The apostles wear vividly patterned local Adire prints and those restraining Jesus appear to be wearing colonial-era police uniform. The overall palette of the series is blue and green, with hints of yellow and highlights in orange. Geometric shapes abound, recalling patterns found on traditional Nigerian textiles and architecture. While these forms structure the compositions, they also extend onto the crosses that feature prominently in many of the images. The prints are individually titled as follows: Jesus is Condemned to Death, Jesus Takes his Cross, Jesus Falls the First Time, Jesus Meets his Mother, Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus, Veronica Wipes Jesus’ Face, Jesus Falls the Second Time, Jesus and the Women of Jerusalem, Jesus Falls the Third Time, Jesus’ Clothes are Torn Off, Jesus is Nailed to the Cross, Jesus Dies on the Cross, Jesus is Taken from the Cross and Jesus is Laid in the Tomb. Thirteen of the prints are number eight in an edition of fifty. Jesus Falls the First Time is number eight in an edition of forty-eight. Complete sets of the prints are rare; although they can be shown individually, they are ideally shown all together as they were in the inaugural exhibition at Tate Modern, London in 2001, Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis.

Bruce Onobrakpeya, Jesus is taken from the cross  1969

This is one in a series by Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya comprising fourteen linocut prints on paper in an elongated landscape format. The subject is a biblical one, with each of the prints depicting a different moment from Jesus’ last days on Earth as a man, beginning with his condemnation by Pontius Pilate and ending with his crucifixion and laying in the tomb. The episodes portrayed – known in Christian theology as The Stations of the Cross – are precisely detailed and dramatised in Onobrakpeya’s prints, but have been placed within an African setting. The apostles wear vividly patterned local Adire prints and those restraining Jesus appear to be wearing colonial-era police uniform. The overall palette of the series is blue and green, with hints of yellow and highlights in orange. Geometric shapes abound, recalling patterns found on traditional Nigerian textiles and architecture. While these forms structure the compositions, they also extend onto the crosses that feature prominently in many of the images. The prints are individually titled as follows: Jesus is Condemned to Death, Jesus Takes his Cross, Jesus Falls the First Time, Jesus Meets his Mother, Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus, Veronica Wipes Jesus’ Face, Jesus Falls the Second Time, Jesus and the Women of Jerusalem, Jesus Falls the Third Time, Jesus’ Clothes are Torn Off, Jesus is Nailed to the Cross, Jesus Dies on the Cross, Jesus is Taken from the Cross and Jesus is Laid in the Tomb. Thirteen of the prints are number eight in an edition of fifty. Jesus Falls the First Time is number eight in an edition of forty-eight. Complete sets of the prints are rare; although they can be shown individually, they are ideally shown all together as they were in the inaugural exhibition at Tate Modern, London in 2001, Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis.

Bruce Onobrakpeya, Jesus meets his mother  1969

This is one in a series by Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya comprising fourteen linocut prints on paper in an elongated landscape format. The subject is a biblical one, with each of the prints depicting a different moment from Jesus’ last days on Earth as a man, beginning with his condemnation by Pontius Pilate and ending with his crucifixion and laying in the tomb. The episodes portrayed – known in Christian theology as The Stations of the Cross – are precisely detailed and dramatised in Onobrakpeya’s prints, but have been placed within an African setting. The apostles wear vividly patterned local Adire prints and those restraining Jesus appear to be wearing colonial-era police uniform. The overall palette of the series is blue and green, with hints of yellow and highlights in orange. Geometric shapes abound, recalling patterns found on traditional Nigerian textiles and architecture. While these forms structure the compositions, they also extend onto the crosses that feature prominently in many of the images. The prints are individually titled as follows: Jesus is Condemned to Death, Jesus Takes his Cross, Jesus Falls the First Time, Jesus Meets his Mother, Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus, Veronica Wipes Jesus’ Face, Jesus Falls the Second Time, Jesus and the Women of Jerusalem, Jesus Falls the Third Time, Jesus’ Clothes are Torn Off, Jesus is Nailed to the Cross, Jesus Dies on the Cross, Jesus is Taken from the Cross and Jesus is Laid in the Tomb. Thirteen of the prints are number eight in an edition of fifty. Jesus Falls the First Time is number eight in an edition of forty-eight. Complete sets of the prints are rare; although they can be shown individually, they are ideally shown all together as they were in the inaugural exhibition at Tate Modern, London in 2001, Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis.

Paulo Nazareth, Cinema Brasil  2012–2013

Tadeusz Suminski, Air Heater Rotor, Racibórz Boiler Factory  1962

This is one of nine small black and white silver gelatin photographs in Tate’s collection by the post-war Polish photographer Tadeusz Suminski that were taken in Polish factories. They come from a larger body of work made between 1962 and 1964 for an assignment on new industrial complexes in Poland; Suminski later selected certain images such as these to develop and print privately for inclusion in exhibitions and competitions. The photographs feature closely cropped details of machines and mass-produced industrial products arranged in careful compositions that verge on abstraction. By focusing on serial patterns and contrasts of light and shade, they draw attention to the potential for beauty inherent in the machine-made, industrial environment. The works are titled descriptively according to the factory in which they were taken and the material or machine they depict. Tate’s prints are vintage prints, acquired from the artist’s estate.

Tadeusz Suminski, Cigarettes, Czyzyny  1962

This is one of nine small black and white silver gelatin photographs in Tate’s collection by the post-war Polish photographer Tadeusz Suminski that were taken in Polish factories. They come from a larger body of work made between 1962 and 1964 for an assignment on new industrial complexes in Poland; Suminski later selected certain images such as these to develop and print privately for inclusion in exhibitions and competitions. The photographs feature closely cropped details of machines and mass-produced industrial products arranged in careful compositions that verge on abstraction. By focusing on serial patterns and contrasts of light and shade, they draw attention to the potential for beauty inherent in the machine-made, industrial environment. The works are titled descriptively according to the factory in which they were taken and the material or machine they depict. Tate’s prints are vintage prints, acquired from the artist’s estate.

Bruce Onobrakpeya, Veronica wipes Jesus’ face  1969

This is one in a series by Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya comprising fourteen linocut prints on paper in an elongated landscape format. The subject is a biblical one, with each of the prints depicting a different moment from Jesus’ last days on Earth as a man, beginning with his condemnation by Pontius Pilate and ending with his crucifixion and laying in the tomb. The episodes portrayed – known in Christian theology as The Stations of the Cross – are precisely detailed and dramatised in Onobrakpeya’s prints, but have been placed within an African setting. The apostles wear vividly patterned local Adire prints and those restraining Jesus appear to be wearing colonial-era police uniform. The overall palette of the series is blue and green, with hints of yellow and highlights in orange. Geometric shapes abound, recalling patterns found on traditional Nigerian textiles and architecture. While these forms structure the compositions, they also extend onto the crosses that feature prominently in many of the images. The prints are individually titled as follows: Jesus is Condemned to Death, Jesus Takes his Cross, Jesus Falls the First Time, Jesus Meets his Mother, Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus, Veronica Wipes Jesus’ Face, Jesus Falls the Second Time, Jesus and the Women of Jerusalem, Jesus Falls the Third Time, Jesus’ Clothes are Torn Off, Jesus is Nailed to the Cross, Jesus Dies on the Cross, Jesus is Taken from the Cross and Jesus is Laid in the Tomb. Thirteen of the prints are number eight in an edition of fifty. Jesus Falls the First Time is number eight in an edition of forty-eight. Complete sets of the prints are rare; although they can be shown individually, they are ideally shown all together as they were in the inaugural exhibition at Tate Modern, London in 2001, Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis.

Shikanosuke Yagaki, Stairs  1930–9

Shikanosuke Yagaki was an active member of many of the amateur photography clubs flourishing in Japan in the 1930s, including the Sanwa Bank Photo Club, the Karashishi-kai Photo Group, and the Kyoto Leica Club and his work was widely exhibited. Despite a lack of professional training, Yagaki developed a sophisticated style which combined the influence of European modernism with typical Japanese subjects. His work shows a great understanding of the camera’s potential, playing with movement, perspective, light and shadow.

Gallery label, June 2011

Iwao Yamawaki, Bauhaus Student  1930–2

Born in Fujita, Nagasaki, Iwao Yamawaki studied architecture at the Tokyo School of Arts and after graduating worked as an architect in a construction company. During this time, he took pictures with his 35mm camera to support and document his architectural studies. In 1931 he travelled to Germany to study at the Bauhaus in Dessau and became heavily influenced by László Moholy-Nagy’s idea that photography could open up new ways of seeing the world beyond those available to the human eye. Yamawaki travelled widely in Europe and the Soviet Union, documenting modernist architecture and design, as well as capturing student life at the Bauhaus.

Gallery label, November 2015

Fahrelnissa Zeid, Untitled  c.1950s

Fahrelnissa Zeid used swirling, crossing lines to paint this abstract artwork. After drawing the lines in pencil, she filled in the shapes made between them with black, green, blue and pink. The result is a complex, kaleidoscopic effect. Zeid made the painting when she was living in London in the 1950s. In 1949 she had taken her first transatlantic flight and was captivated by the abstracted perspective of aerial views. She later translated their scale and feeling into the whirling shapes that appear in this painting. A divisionist effect is achieved, whereby individual patches of colour are built up to create an overall composition.

Gallery label, November 2021

Bruce Onobrakpeya, Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus  1969

This is one in a series by Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya comprising fourteen linocut prints on paper in an elongated landscape format. The subject is a biblical one, with each of the prints depicting a different moment from Jesus’ last days on Earth as a man, beginning with his condemnation by Pontius Pilate and ending with his crucifixion and laying in the tomb. The episodes portrayed – known in Christian theology as The Stations of the Cross – are precisely detailed and dramatised in Onobrakpeya’s prints, but have been placed within an African setting. The apostles wear vividly patterned local Adire prints and those restraining Jesus appear to be wearing colonial-era police uniform. The overall palette of the series is blue and green, with hints of yellow and highlights in orange. Geometric shapes abound, recalling patterns found on traditional Nigerian textiles and architecture. While these forms structure the compositions, they also extend onto the crosses that feature prominently in many of the images. The prints are individually titled as follows: Jesus is Condemned to Death, Jesus Takes his Cross, Jesus Falls the First Time, Jesus Meets his Mother, Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus, Veronica Wipes Jesus’ Face, Jesus Falls the Second Time, Jesus and the Women of Jerusalem, Jesus Falls the Third Time, Jesus’ Clothes are Torn Off, Jesus is Nailed to the Cross, Jesus Dies on the Cross, Jesus is Taken from the Cross and Jesus is Laid in the Tomb. Thirteen of the prints are number eight in an edition of fifty. Jesus Falls the First Time is number eight in an edition of forty-eight. Complete sets of the prints are rare; although they can be shown individually, they are ideally shown all together as they were in the inaugural exhibition at Tate Modern, London in 2001, Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis.

Paulo Nazareth, Cinema Africa  2012–2013

György Kepes, Compass and Strainer Photogram  n.d

This is one of a large group of photograms and studies in modernist photography in Tate’s collection by the Hungarian-born photographer, painter, designer, teacher and writer, Gyorgy Kepes (see Tate P80532–P80568, T13973–T13975). They date from 1938 to the early 1940s and were made in the United States, where Kepes had emigrated in 1937. Kepes made his earliest photograms in Budapest, taking nature as his starting point, directly recording the process without a camera onto photosensitized surfaces. In the late 1920s Kepes joined the Berlin studio of the Hungarian artist and modernist photographer László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946). Moholy-Nagy had been a teacher at the Bauhaus School in Germany and was one of the principals in promoting the values of the Bauhaus movement, as well as a pioneer who experimented with a multitude of materials and techniques. Kepes was introduced to the ‘new vision’ provided by the possibilities of modern art techniques while collaborating alongside Moholy-Nagy. He began to experiment with photograms himself – photographic prints made in the darkroom by placing objects directly onto light sensitive paper and exposing the paper to light. Later, he made prints he called ‘photo-drawings’, in which he applied paint to a glass plate that he then used as though it were a negative. Only a few of Kepes’s works from this earlier period survived the artist’s many moves in the 1930s and the Second World War.

Gauri Gill, Rajesh Vangad, The Eye in the Sky  2014–16

These photographs show evidence of sea pollution in a small mangrove forest in Port Dickson, Malaysia, Gill’s hometown. Colourful plastic bags and other rubbish have washed up with the tides, getting stuck in branches and roots. In the black and white photographs, it can be hard to distinguish the waste among the plants. The first photo shows large cargo ships in the distance. This suggests the activities of Port Dickson’s commercial harbour are the source of the detritus. More widely, the series raises questions about the consequences of globalisation on the environment.

Gallery label, June 2021

Cameron Rowland, Assessment  2018

Iwao Yamawaki, Zuyev Workers’ Club Moscow  1931

Born in Fujita, Nagasaki, Iwao Yamawaki studied architecture at the Tokyo School of Arts and after graduating worked as an architect in a construction company. During this time, he took pictures with his 35mm camera to support and document his architectural studies. In 1931 he travelled to Germany to study at the Bauhaus in Dessau and became heavily influenced by László Moholy-Nagy’s idea that photography could open up new ways of seeing the world beyond those available to the human eye. Yamawaki travelled widely in Europe and the Soviet Union, documenting modernist architecture and design, as well as capturing student life at the Bauhaus.

Gallery label, November 2015

Shikanosuke Yagaki, Untitled (Clock)  1930–9

Shikanosuke Yagaki was an active member of many of the amateur photography clubs flourishing in Japan in the 1930s, including the Sanwa Bank Photo Club, the Karashishi-kai Photo Group, and the Kyoto Leica Club and his work was widely exhibited. Despite a lack of professional training, Yagaki developed a sophisticated style which combined the influence of European modernism with typical Japanese subjects. His work shows a great understanding of the camera’s potential, playing with movement, perspective, light and shadow.

Gallery label, June 2011

Shikanosuke Yagaki, Banister Detail  1930–9

Banister Detail 1930–9 is a photograph taken by the Japanese modernist photographer Shikanosuke Yagaki. It depicts a close-up view of a section of staircase and an iron banister. The uneven patterns formed by the oblique angle of the banister demonstrate Yagaki’s interest in the formal potential of photography as a way of exploring composition through light and shadow.

Ivan Picelj, Surface IX  1962

Surface IX 1962 is a square-format wooden relief on a square wooden backboard which has been painted black by the artist. The relief itself is composed of twenty-seven vertical slats of wood of equal height and width, placed adjacent to one another. Each wooden slat has been machine-routed, or turned, creating a pattern of horizontal indentations at varying intervals along the slats. The profile of each moulded strip is undulated, some strips containing as few as thirteen notches, others as many as nineteen. Each profile becomes a different structural element in the constructed relief. Placed side-by-side, the alternating profiles create a sense of rhythm and movement. Surface IX belongs to a body of wooden reliefs that Picelj created between the late 1950s and the early 1960s to which he gave the name ‘surfaces’, differentiating them from each other by using the roman numerical system.

Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, Mesh sculpture  1961

Lorna Simpson, Five Day Forecast  1991

If portraiture is intended to communicate something unique about its subject, Five Day Forecast might be described as an ‘anti-portrait’. The economy of the images, their serial arrangement and the use of black and white recall the conventions of nineteenth-century ethnographic photography, in which the subject becomes a de-individualised representative of a wider group. But in Simpson’s work, rather than being available for scrutiny and categorisation, the figure is photographed cropped so only her torso is visible. In this way, she remains ultimately inaccessible to the viewer.

Gallery label, November 2015