Saturday 3rd September 2011

This week for three nights I spent some time with the family in London. We all had a choice of venue to visit whilst we were there and mine was the ‘Museum of London’.

The museum is situated between The Barbican and St Paul’s in London and amongst many interesting facts, holds over 100,000 paintings, prints and photographs of London. The museum itself covers London’s history from 450,000 BC to the modern day and covers all historical events that have occurred in our Capital City. The museum also has various events and exhibitions throughout the year at both this venue and one in London’s Dockland.

During my visit I attended one of the museum’s major exhibitions, ‘London Street Photography’. This exhibition ran until 4^th September 2011 and I was determined to visit before it closed. The exhibition covered London street photography from around 1860 to the present day (2010), with the vast majority of the prints in black and white. It examined the relationship between the photographer, the people who live in London and its streets.

There were a couple of photographers that stood out for me on a personal basis. ‘Wolf Suschitzky’ had three of his photographs published of Charing Cross Road taken in 1937. These were all themed with people moving around on the street and with a common lighting associated with each. There were theatre signs in one, street lamps in another and advertising and trams in the third. They all really worked, although busy photographs, they made you want to look through them and pick up the detail as you did this.  ‘Jerome Liebling’ had one photograph published, taken in 1967 and called ‘Outside Claridge’s Hotel’. The facial expressions really do tell a thousand words on the workers face as he passes one of the staff at Claridge’s. I also liked a couple of modern day photograph’s in the exhibition, one by ‘Nils Jorgensen’ called ‘Card Fraud’ and one by ‘Matt Stuart’ called ‘Trafalgar Square’. Both this photographs have perfect timing and an element of fun.