PHOTOGRAPHY at the V and A

I've loved it since I first saw it in a book a couple of years ago. And there it was, big as you please and stuck on the wall in Gallery 38a at the V & A. And not just Mr Robert Frank, there also Lorca diCorcia, McCullin, Sarah Pickering (she came to college two years ago and gave a talk), Thomas Ruff (Deutsch Neue Perspective and German School of Objectivity, isn't it ?), Tony Ray Jones, and more about whom I know less.

I've just remembered there's a tiny print by Dorothea Lange, 'White Angel Bread Line', of which it is said that on the day she took this shot, she shut up her fashionable studio and went out to work for the FSA, shooting the American Depression. Do you buy that ?

However, there's also Mr Gustav le Gray, from the 1860's. He did two photo negatives for his landscapes, one for the sea or the ground, and another for the sky. His skies all look good, when no-one else's did, because he could expose differently for each component. Too nerdy, eh, and it's at the V & A for a while. Check it out at

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/photography/index.html

If you get tired of only fifty images to see in 38a, there's always the Photography archive way up on the top floor. Bring your cotton gloves . . .