Every photograph we take is a self-portrait. Some of us are compelled to take photos of serene landscapes, while others are drawn to urban chaos. We can't help but reveal what is within us.

The same applies to curators. Johny Pitts, who put together After the End of History, was born in 1987 and grew up in a working-class part of Sheffield. He is mixed-race, born to an African-American father and a white English mother. He is also a musician, a photographer, and a television presenter. Once you have this biographical information, the exhibition makes a lot more sense.

Its title, After the End of History, refers to Francis Fukuyama's long-discredited notion that liberal democracy is the final form of politics. For Pitts, the collapse of communism severed working-class photographers from the ideological struggle that fueled their work. Instead, these artists were mutely compelled1 to focus on self-identity, hedonism, and community.

The tone of the show is established as soon as you walk through the door and see glossy shots of Sheffield boxing hero Naseem Hamed. The British-Yemini "Prince" is famous for his thick Yorkshire accent, his ostentatious consumerism, and his devotion to Allah. In this, he is perhaps an early exemplar of Yookay Aesthetics, a derisive term popularised on X to mock the perceived contradictions in British identity.

The account presents a world of pre-teen Drill rap fans, streets filled with Deliveroo cyclists, and Islamic messages set alongside drinking and gambling. I deplore the implicit racism of these accounts which condemn millions with reductive stereotypes. Yet, there is a certain truth to their idea that the United Kingdom lacks a coherent story.

What is British culture? What would it mean to assimilate to it? Is it just going to the pub, having a sense of fair play, and respecting eccentricity?2 In a globalised era of hyperindividualism, it's difficult to say. Modern Britain seems to have few shared values beyond a vague reverence for institutions like the NHS. Danny Boyle's Olympic opening ceremony feels like a distant memory. These questions are especially acute as this Hayward touring exhibition arrives in Scotland, a country small enough to have its own traditions, none of which are represented.3

Intriguingly, Pitts spent a year in Japan as a child, a place thanks to hundreds of years of isolation does have a common culture. In Japan, artists can call upon a shared reference to Shintoism.4 What does Britain have? In this exhibition, working-class culture amounts to dance music and poverty.5

My favourite photographs in the exhibition are of people dancing in the loved-up nineties. I remember the smart shirts and the desire to live for the weekend. When, in 2019, Jeremy Deller showed teenagers videos of ravers, they couldn't believe that humans had ever been so unafraid to let go and enjoy themselves. To do so now is to risk public shaming on social media. Given the rise of teetotalism, modern teenagers also seem to know that hedonism can have negative consequences.

Pitts mentioned that one of the first things he wanted to include in the exhibition was Richard Billingham's photographs of his parents. Billingham is a rare example of a photographer whose work has crossed into the fine art world (he was one of the few in Charles Saatchi's era-defining Sensation exhibition). The power in Billingham’s photographs came from his willingness to subject his parents to the brutal gaze of his lens. He was on the inside of a fraught situation. However, everything else he has done since is somewhat boring. Personal identity is a well that quickly runs dry.

Indeed, the exhibition might as well be called "there's no such thing as society". We are all individuals, expressing ourselves as we please. For Pitts, what makes Britain great is its diversity and the fact that it can contain so many different cultures. However, this delicate balance of diversity seems unlikely to be maintained forever, particularly with Reform leading some polls.

The strongest images, like Kavi Pujara's of Indian families in Leicester, are of people with a distinct, traditional culture that persists in modern Britain. On the doorstep of a family home is a swastika, shocking to Westerners but totally normal within Hinduism where, in Sanskrit, it means ‘auspiciousness’.

It shows that some cultures are more resilient than others, persisting across thousands of years, unconcerned by semiotic pollution. Almost all the others in the exhibition submit to the dominant American hegemony.

One surprising photo in the exhibition of a Roma couple with their baby. It doesn't seem to say much about Britain beyond the fact that Roma people live here and are people like everyone else. But Roma are some of the most demonised people in the world (Pitts mentions in his book that he stereotypically assumed that the thieves were Romani when he got mugged in Paris). It’s rare to see them represented in the art world. This is not necessarily because of curatorial prejudice but because their culture has survived by not integrating.

Ultimately, even viewing and reviewing an exhibition is a kind of self-portrait. We are drawn to things that reflect who we are. For instance, I was drawn to Kelly O'Brien's tender photos of her grandmother and the lost fashions of Tom Wood's kids on the bus. For the inhabitants of Edinburgh, at least the bourgeois types who tend to go to exhibitions, this show may sometimes feel like a poverty safari. But there is plenty of visual and narrative stimulation to be found if they linger long enough to absorb it.

After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989 – 2024, curated by Johny Pitts with Hayward Gallery Touring is at Stills Gallery until 28 June 2025.

Artists include: Richard Billingham, Sam Blackwood, Serena Brown, Antony Cairns, Rob Clayton, Joanne Coates, Josh Cole, Artúr Čonka, Elaine Constantine, Natasha Edgington, Sandra George, Richard Grassick, Anna Magnowska, Rene Matic, JA Mortram, Kelly O’Brien, Eddie Otchere, Kavi Pujara, Khadija Saye, Chris Shaw, Trevor Smith, Ewen Spencer, Hannah Starkey, Igoris Taran, Nathaniel Telemaque, Barbara Wasiak and Tom Wood.

Read more about the show at stills.org.

3

Stills Gallery is near the Royal Mile, where bagpipes can always be heard and images of Highland Cows can be seen. I was, by contrast, drawn to Sandy Stoddart’s statue of David Hume:

4

As I saw this week with Yuichi Hirako's show at The Modern Institute:

5

There is a wall in the exhibition with more rural scenes, but these seemed strangely out of place to me.