An Alternative History of Photography: Works from the Solander Collection

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at the history of photography.

I found this a useful run through developments and themes in photography but wasn’t sure how alternative I found it.

The idea was to leave out some of the better known names in order to think beyond Europe and North America to give “a fuller, richer and more dynamic version of photography’s evolution”. However I found a lot of the big names were there plus I’ve seen quite a few shows recently of non-Western work so some of the other names were familiar to me.

I liked the way it was roughly chronological but then used that to gently theme the work. The early section did introduce me to new names to look up and it’s always interesting to see the influence of women in the early days.

A later section looked at how photographs can help to form identity and I loved this quote from Martyn Ewoma, artist and critic, “A nation is made up of and defined by its people, as such, how those people are represented through photography is crucial to a peoples understanding of themselves.” The section was a subtle contrast to an earlier one looking at how Western photographers had shown indigenous people on areas they visited.

Closes 19 February 2023


Review

Guardian


 

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