Photography Against the End of History
A new exhibition examines working-class photography in the UK in the years since 1989 — and demonstrates art’s potential to expose political failure and social division.
8 Articles by:
Nathalie Olah
Nathalie Olah is a freelance journalist and editor. Her writing focuses on the intersection between politics and contemporary culture, and she is the author of Bad Taste and Steal as Much as You Can.
Remembering Eve Babitz
Eve Babitz, the chronicler of Los Angeles, passed away last month aged 78. Her work combined the qualities of generosity and glamour, rejecting self-pity and victimhood.
Taking Back Birmingham
Two writers who grew up in Birmingham – one in Thatcher’s 1980s, and one in Blair’s ’90s – discuss class, geography, housing, work, and accents inside and outside of England’s second city.
Second City Blues
Two new accounts of growing up and leaving Birmingham provide moving accounts of the snobbery and misunderstanding directed at England’s second city by the country’s social elite.
Class, Taste and Sour Grapes
Last month, Rudy Kurniawan was released after seven years in prison for passing off cheap fakes as fine wine – a crime punished, above all, for exposing ruling class pretensions about taste.
The Tradition of the New
Walsall’s ‘New’ Art Gallery opened 20 years ago, and is still one of the best in Britain. As one of the few enduring successes of New Labour’s lavish arts programme, we ask: what went right?
How Big Tech Is Exploiting Coronavirus to Entrench its Power
When tech giants offer to help with contact tracing apps, they aren’t being altruistic – they’re embedding themselves in critical infrastructure like healthcare in ways that will be difficult to reverse.
Steal as Much as You Can
An interview with Nathalie Olah about class, culture, television, home improvement, bad taste and revolt.