The Camera Exposed

Interesting exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum of photographs which feature cameras.

It shows that cameras often appear in self-portraits of photographers but can also be included to draw attention to the voyeuristic nature of photography.

There seemed to be a lot of pictures by or of Weeggee, the New York photographer named after a Ouji board due to his ability to get to a crime scene before the police. I was amused though that the first picture of him was when he visited Camera Week at Owen Owen in Coventry! I’d not come across him before but I’ll look out for his work now.

I liked Isle Bing’s self-portrait, set up like a Flemish portrait, where the only bit of the camera you can see is the shutter release cable. It felt like an artist painting themselves with a brush. I also liked Nicholas Nixon’s series “The Brown Sisters” of his wife and her sisters taken every year. Many of them like the one shown include his shadow with the camera. There were also a number of fashion pictures with cameras in them.

I loved the inclusion of work by Charles Thurston Thompson, the first official photographer of the V&A. He documented works in the collection and on loan to the museum including a lovely one here of a Venetian mirror with his reflection in it. I also noted that his sister took over from him when he died. I bet she’s interesting.

Finally there were some lovely pictures of cameras taken for advertising pictures and the whole show could also have been read as a history of the camera as the technical detail on the commentaries was very good.

Closes on 5 March 2017

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