Camera fans who love looking at and trying to understand different photos will be pleased to hear that the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) has opened its new Photography Centre.
Last week (October 12th), the V&A launched the exhibition hall that showcases works from some of the world’s earliest cameras and pioneering photographers.
It is spread out over four new galleries, which means the space dedicated just to photos has doubled in size. More than 800,000 of the museum’s photographs are being displayed at the centre from the 19th century – when cameras were first used – to 2018.
The Photography Centre opened with the Collecting Photography: From Daguerreotype to Digital exhibition. This is being held in The Bern and Rony Schwartz Gallery, which used to be known as Gallery 100. This display allows visitors to learn more about the art, and see the impressive changes that have occurred over the last 150 years the technology has been around.
Director of the V&A Tristram Hunt said: “Our collection – established by the V&A’s visionary first director Henry Cole – now seamlessly spans the entire history of photography, telling the story of the medium from the daguerreotype to the digital.”
He added the centre will help to “re-establish photography as one of our defining collections”.
While Mr Hunt recognised that everyone has the tools to take photos whenever they want these days with the help of their smartphone, the exhibition venue “explores and explains the medium in a compelling way”, reminding attendees that good photography is a true art.
Among the work that visitors can see at the London gallery are prints by William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron and Roger Fenton.
The V&A also commissioned German photographer Thomas Ruff and American snapper Penelope Umbrico to produce major new projects for the museum. Ruff’s exhibition includes work that reinterprets photographs made 160 years ago using Linnaeus Tripe’s negatives of India and Burma from the 1850s.
Umbrico created a feature for the Light Wall, using digital images of clouds from the V&A’s collection of paintings between 1630 and 1885.
Senior Curator of Photographs Martin Barnes stated: “The new Photography Centre brings to life some of the V&A’s most beautiful original picture galleries and provides a permanent home for one of the finest and most inspiring collections of photography in the world.”
As well as showcasing photos, the gallery will feature negatives, camera equipment, photographic publications and original documents that will help visitors learn more about international photography through the years. Indeed, there are more than 150 cameras on display at the centre, with some available to be handled so attendees can see how some of the world’s most famous photographers capture their images.
If you are a keen photographer, why not pay a visit to the London gallery to see one of the largest collection of photos in the world? Among the highlights is a photo of Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton in 1953 at her coronation.
Visiting the museum could inspire your photography skills and lead you to taking several images of a high standard. They may even be so good, your float mounted digital prints could fool your friends and family into believing they were snapped by a professional.
