Ten.8

TEN.8 was a British photography magazine published quarterly in Birmingham, throughout the 1980s, folding in 1992.

History

Ten.8 (the title referring to the 10" x 8" format of the traditional black-and-white photographic print) was founded in 1979 by the Birmingham photographer collective Derek Bishton, Brian Homer and John Reardon (1951–2018) in order to promote the city's photographers. The collective also included Roy Peters then studying photography at Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, social documentary photographer Nick Hedges, Stourbridge College lecturer John Taylor, and later Paul Lewis from Wolverhampton Polytechnic and John Hodgett form Bournville College of Art.

By 1984, Rhonda Wilson (1953 – 2014) had joined the editorial board and had a lasting influence. She designed two issues; 'Another Coal Face' (1984) and 'Evidence' (1987). In 1988, when she and Roshini Kempadoo co-edited the Spectrum Women’s Photography Festival exhibition catalogue, it was published as a special supplement to issue 30.

Editor Derek Bishton established 'Ten.8 Touring', an exhibition touring project in 1987 and when in 1989, Ten.8's loose co-operative was formalised as a limited company, Wilson became one of the magazine’s directors and took up responsibility for the touring program, benefitting from her visit during the period to Houston FotoFest in the US by emulating their the portfolio reviews. Wilson left Ten.8 in 1991 and was later awarded an MBE for her services to photography.

Photographers

Contributing photographers came from a new breed of documentary workers and included Paul Hill, Angela Kelly, Brian Griffin, Abbas, Susan Meiselas, Vanley Burke, Nigel Dickinson, and Chris Steele-Perkins and their imagery appeared alongside writing by academics and community activists. The quarterly format permitted the collation of material into themed editions. It was one of a number of niche magazines dedicated to critical discussions of photography and related media in the 1980s, that included Screen, Screen Education, Camerawork, and Creative Camera.

Content and context

Class

The stance of Ten.8 was in the left-wing intellectual tradition, entrenched in the year it was founded in the last year of James Callaghan’s minority Labour government and the 'Winter of Discontent' in which imposed wage restraint led to widespread industrial action, then the election of Margret Thatcher, the campaign at Greenham Common (1981–2000) and the fateful UK miners' strike (1984–85). The issue no.15, 1984, dealt with working-class representation in unemployment and homelessness, and hidden relationships of power, through the frame of George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, and his The Road to Wigan Pier and the 1930's Depression.

Feminism

The tenth edition of the magazine reflected on recent histories of feminism in documentary photography in Britain. Published in 1983, four years after the first edition , the issue’s content was themed ‘Photography, peace and protest’, with a central photo essay titled ‘Greenham Common'.

Social justice

In the context of its locality amongst the migrant communities of Birmingham, it promoted the struggle for British Black and Asian social justice as reflected in photographic and media representations. Ten.8, vol. 2, no. 3, 1992, titled Critical Decade: Black British Photography in the 80s was an important edition as a retrospective guide to recent black cultural politics in times of rapid and turbulent change in which theory and practice dealt with race, politics and representation. An  introduction written by David A. Bailey and Stuart Hall, is followed by their essay 'The Vertigo of Displacement: shifts within black documentary practices',  and other contributions by Kobena Mercer, Isaac Julian, Pratibha Parmar, Aurat Shakti, Mumtaz Karimjee, Amina Patel, Gilane Tawadros, Eddie Chambers, Paul Gilroy and Sonali Fernando that pursue multiple issues of identity and the black photographic image, skin colour, diaspora, blackness as a cultural icon, racial confrontation and sexuality.

The writing of that issue is framed with images by David Lewis, Vanley Burke, and Franklyn Rodgers, Armet Francis, Joy Gregory, Vincent Stokes, Sutapwa Biswas, Zarina Bhimji, Sonia Boyce, Keith Piper, Chila Burman, Samena Rana, Sunil Gupta, David Lewis, Maxine Walker, Roshini Kempadoo, Ingrid Pollard, Mitra Tabrizian, Zarina Bhimji, Pat Ward Williams, Carrie Mae Weems, Clarissa Sligh, Lorna Simpson, Claudette Holmes, Peter Max Kandhola, Valerie Brown, Susan Banton, Jeni McKenzie and Mumtaz Karimjee.

Intellectualism

Ten.8 has been called a 'First World' commentary on culture, compared with the contemporaneous pop culture magazine The Face as a representation of the 'Second World'. Where the latter advised on 'street credibility' and 'nous' for those negotiating fashion, urban living and the music scene, Ten.8 featured knowledgeable and fiercely contested debates on the history, theory, politics and practice of photography and offered source material for educators.

Influence and legacy

Ten.8 had a far-reaching impact that drew international readers; from an initial print run of 500 in 1979, to 5,000 in 1992. Ten.8 was represented at the Houston FotoFest and at Recontres Au Noir, Arles Photographic Festival (1993).