Designing Power: Thatcher, Press Photography and a Polarized 1980s England

Abstract

In What do Pictures Want W.J.T. Mitchell famously attributes the power that imageshold in society to be made into everything and nothing, sometimes in the same breath,and ultimately how we “over-and underestimate” the impact of these very same imagesdaily (2005: 3). Mitchell’s idea that images are deployed and analyzed in a multitudeof ways is manifest across the discipline of visual studies: from slides of organisms inthe medical sciences, to topographical photomapping of cities, to archives of trickphotography, and, more insidiously, codified records for surveillance or political coercionby state institutions. These examples are each the result of a vast and intricate visualculture for photographic image delivery. The Thatcher years exemplify another exampleand the relationship between the “over-and underestimated” uses of press photography,and this relationship determines the framework for this essay’s investigation into thisconservative, scopic regime. This article will attempt to trace the following ideas asthey are developed in this analysis: Why are press photographs taken of Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher worth recovering? Second, were Thatcher’s iconic images found in TheTimes newspaper congenial to the neoliberal economy of the 1980s? And, finally, howsuccessful was the Thatcher image in symbolizing a free market ideology to the Britishpeople at this time?