"The images now, 40 years later, are a historical document"

To mark the opening of Tate Britain's exhibition The 80s: Photographing Britain, Zoe Whitfield of Dazed spoke to seven of the featured photographers about their work. As suggested by one of their number, Tom Wood, it's a telling portrait of the decade.

Deindustrialisation continued apace, with the Miners' Strike symbolising the death of heavy industry, so Anna Fox's focus on the office in her series Work Stations was apposite - a classic case of an artist bristling at the suggestion that "it wasn't considered a valid subject" and asking viewers to look more closely at the apparently banal spaces that many of us inhabit every day of our working lives.

Similarly, Paul Reas was astute in recognising that in an increasingly consumerist society, "shopping malls were the new cathedrals of consumption and retail parks with supermarkets and furniture stores the parish churches". You don't need to read his accompanying comments to know that his bold colour images were influenced by Martin Parr's New Brighton photos in particular. (The sense that Parr played a significant role in shaping the way the 80s were captured is underscored by the fact that he was also one of Fox's formal teachers.)

Clearly, though, the exhibition isn't solely focused on the macro level of shifting social, political and economic patterns; it also covers individuals' negotiation of identity. For Joy Gregory, "working in various community situations" meant that she "became much more aware of the fact that people didn't have control of their image"; self-portraiture was therefore both a form of personal expression and a political/politicised tool.