Office life in the 1980s

People walking away under a banner reading 'Freedom' (description, not title).

Working life

Fox’s series was commissioned by our museum and Camerawork magazine in 1987. Documentary photographers had captured working people since the 1800s, but it was rare to focus on office life. Although Fox’s subject is familiar to many of us, the images she produced feel unusual, unnerving and sometimes grotesque. It adds up to a satirical critique of this new version of office life – an environment she saw as dehumanising.

Trapped

As well as presenting people riding high in the 1980s, Fox selected moments that appear to show people exhausted, worn down or degraded by their jobs. The new management culture of the 1980s, where performance was monitored and improvement expected, was firmly within Fox’s sights.

Woman in a mustard coloured suit walking away in an office environment (description, not title).

From the series ‘Work Stations’, co-commissioned by the Museum of London and Camerawork in 1987, documenting the new office culture of the 1980s and the emerging technologies that rapidly transformed the nature of the working day. This was the first body of photographic work looking at office life in Britain (diverging from the more typical documentary photography of the working classes) and it captures the mundanity, competition, rivalry, stress and gender imbalances of this new culture from a woman’s point of view. The images are accompanied by captions which are an integral part of the work.

Power dressing

In the 1980s, more women were in work than ever before, and many felt empowered in their jobs. Fox’s photos give us a taste of women’s workplace style then – shoulder pads, trouser suits and big hair. But gaps in pay and opportunities remained, as did openly sexist attitudes.

Man in a suit in an office environment (description).

Thatcherism

The 1980s were defined by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who led the country for the entire decade. Thatcher championed individualism and promised that hard work would reward you, no matter your background. In her economy, many won and many lost. Heavy industries shrank, but services grew. Property ownership rose, but unemployment was high.

Yuppies

Short for ‘young urban professional’, ‘yuppie’ was the label used in the 1980s for London’s well-paid workers who thrived in the decade’s culture of aspiration. They soon became associated with flashy displays of wealth and the gentrification of certain areas of London.

Finance fortunes

Thatcher’s free market deregulation and the introduction of electronic trading sparked a boom for London’s financial industry, often symbolised by the new towers of Canary Wharf.

Office space

An introductory essay in the book for Work Stations suggests that “if people start working from home, as is technically feasible, economically worth thinking about… and socially anti-social – the face of the office may change all over again.”

The computer age

Paper records were still vital. But the emergence of new technology was changing things. Desktop computers and fax machines became widespread, requiring employees to get to grips with a new way of working.