This essay examines a body of photography books and exhibitions from the 1990s and 2000s, produced in Britain by professional photographers and supported by social and cultural organizations, which engaged with notions of collective identification and subjectivity, thus making significant political statements at a time when British society was going through major social changes and years of soul-searching. On the one hand, we specifically discuss how notions of identity like class, ethnicity and nation were addressed by photographic projects and were the subject matters for the politicization of the medium in the two decades. We argue that the demise of traditional forms of social documentary within professional art photography allowed for new artists and political issues to emerge. We show how some photographers and galleries engaged with “identity politics” at a time when multiculturalism was taking centre stage both in political and media discourse and in cultural policies. On the other hand, we also explore some of the more indirect ways in which photographers may have construed ways of dealing with notions of belonging, other than identity, or beyond identity, and suggested forms of collective and political subjectivity through concepts of historical and national narrative, connectedness, or social cohesion.