A Century of Photography 1840-1940

Interesting exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looking at the development of photography in portraiture and the galleries own collection which had started almost from its foundation.

This was a good overview of the subject and had some lovely work in it but I never worked out why they had picked those years. I guess it meant from the start of photography to the Second World War photography but that wasn’t clear and it felt a bit like a randomly picked century.

However as I said there were some beautiful and iconic images. Of course there was a lovely Julia Margaret Cameron of Mary Princep and the Baron Adolf de Mayers of Ottoline Morrell in an aesthetic pose. I loved a picture of Adolphus Huxley by Howard Coster making a feature of his thick glasses to emphasis and distort his eyes. Also a Man Ray of Schiaparelli exposed multiple times to give a checked effect.

I also learnt something, I hadn’t realised Beatrix Potter’s father was a keen amateur photographer who created images for Millais.

Closed on 9 October 2017

 

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