Hunt for boys in photos set to go on show at Tate Britain

An award-winning photographer is trying to trace a group of men whose portraits she took in a south London school 35 years ago, which are set to feature in a major exhibition.

Ingrid Pollard was invited by an English teacher at Tulse Hill School to take the portraits of her students in 1989, a year before it closed.

The photos of the boys, who would now be in their 50s, are being put on show at the Tate Britain later this month.

Pollard said since photographing the teens, she had “often… wondered what they’re still doing”.

The Turner Prize nominee told the BBC when she took the pictures, she had no particular plans for them, but “it was just marking a moment”.

“These were her last class… It was nice for the students, the boys. I felt it made them feel special. They were being marked as something special.”

She said she had used a medium format camera for the shot, which “was on a tripod – there were lights and everything”.

“They had certainly not been photographed that way before.”

The images are set to feature in an exhibition titled The 80s: Photographing Britain, which looks back on the years Margaret Thatcher was in power and examines how photographers responded to changing social and economic conditions.

It will mark the first time Pollard’s photos of the boys have ever been exhibited in the UK.

“They are photographs that I’m very pleased with,” she said.

“I like the interaction between me and the boys that I can see in the photographs – they weren’t trying to hide.

“They might have been shy but they weren’t uncomfortable because they were with their mates.”

Pollard believes the boys are probably “in their early 50s I should think now, or late 40s”.

“I’ve often, far more recently, wondered what they’re still doing, if they’re still in south London. They might be out of the UK, anything.”

She said she wanted to find out their names so that they could be acknowledged within in the exhibition.

“I think if we find some of the boys, they might remember people’s names. They could still be friends.

“I did ask their English teacher, but she doesn’t remember.

“It was a long time ago, if you think how many hundreds of children she must have met at school.”

When Pollard took the pictures, while aged in her 30s, she considered herself far from the mainstream art world.

“We weren’t expecting to be in the Tate. If we did show pictures, we’d have them in a local library or an alternative space,” she explained.

“It wasn’t a job, it was just something we did. I was working at a print collective, it was very much an alternative scene.

“Women and black people, they were kind of excluded.”

These days her work has featured in numerous exhibitions at the likes of the Hayward Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum, and this year she won the Hasselblad Award – an international photography prize considered to be one of the most prestigious in the world.

“I’m being acknowledged now and having exhibitions,” she said.

“It’s about time, but then I always knew my work was noteworthy and important.

“It’s been acknowledged in different ways from the 1980s onwards.”

The 80s: Photographing Britain is at the Tate Britain from 21 November to 5 May 2025