Photography: A Public Art 1840-1939

Confusing exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looking at the first century of photography.

I only say confusing because I went to a similar exhibition in the same space last year and I wasn’t sure what made this show different to that as it covers the same period and similar ideas. I guess from the title that this one is saying that photography is portable and cheap and therefore all people but not sure the pictures chosen show that.

However there were some lovely images. I loved an early one of a Coldstream Guard taken by a photographer called Claudet in his studio which was just over the road from the National Portrait Gallery. Also a picture of a family on the Balmoral estate by George Washington Wilson. Of course there was a Julia Margaret Cameron and it was great to see one of the Beresford portraits of Virginia Woolf. I loved the picture I use for this post of Ben Nicholson by Humphrey Spender.

Closes on 7 October 2018

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