Since the earliest forms of visual representation depicting poverty has always been problematic; from Hogarth’s early 18th Century prints showing the decline of a rich merchant’s son to Don McCullin’s social documentary photographs of poverty, war and famine. ‘Capturing Class Struggle’ aims to question the ethics of photographing poverty and the issues surrounding social documentary photography in response to Don McCullin’s current exhibition at Tate Britain.

Don McCullin attempts to represent his subjects as equals, saying ‘I want them to see that I am looking at them through a pair of eyes that have enormous compassion and understanding’ (McCullin 2011). Despite his good intentions, does McCullin exploit the subjects he photographs? Particularly those who cannot give their consent, such as people who are dead or dying? To question the notions of consent and spectatorship we have chosen to display a selection of images of children and people who are unaware they are being photographed.

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The relationship between the photographer and subject is also important in this exhibition. By having a camera, the photographer has power over the subject and can choose how to represent them. Sontag believes that ‘to photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed’ (Sontag 2011: 14). In documentary photography who is telling the story can be problematic, what gives the photographer the right to tell someone else’s story? For example, McCullin travelled and exposed communities he was not part of, whereas Dennis Morris took ‘Brother Can You Spare Some Change?’ when he was about 16, he was part of the community he was representing and a similar age to the subject in the photograph. As a result, the image does not feel like an outsider looking in, instead there is a sense of compassion.

Another key theme of ‘Capturing Class Struggle’ is aestheticisation, does beauty in photography of class struggle engage us or distance us from the problem? Does beauty distance us and become ‘a call to admiration, not action’ (Sischy, cited in Levi-Strauss 2003: 5) or can ‘beauty can be a powerful conveyor of difficult ideas, it engages people when they might otherwise look away’ (Misrach 2015)?