Exhibition
Another London
Tate Britain, Photography, London, United-Kingdom
Friday July 27, 2012 - Sunday September 16, 2012 - Event ended.
Whilst the eyes of the world are on London this summer, Tate Britain explores the capital city through the eyes of some of the biggest names in international photography.
In the years between 1930 and 1980, some of the best-known photographers from around the world came to London to make work about the city and its communities. Bringing together 180 classic twentieth-century photographs, Another London highlights the vibrancy of the city as a dynamic metropolis, richly diverse and full of contrast.
For these artists London was a foreign city, which they either visited briefly or settled in permanently, and they recorded and represented it in their own unique style and distinctive ways. Emblems of Britishness which might have been familiar to visitors such as pearly kings, red buses and bowler hats are documented alongside the urban poor surviving life in the city as pavement artists, beggars and buskers.
Challenge your own perspective with this rare opportunity to see striking images from renowned photographers including Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Dora Maar, Irving Penn and many more.
Throughout the twentieth century, some of the world’s greatest photographers came to London to make work about the city and its inhabitants. Another London explores the distinctive ways in which London was represented by those for whom it was a foreign city.
The photographs in the exhibition show London as a dynamic metropolis, richly varied and full of contrast. The affluent upper and middle classes are documented alongside the working class and urban poor, surviving life in the city as beggars and street vendors. Emblems of London life such as pearly kings, red buses and bowler hats are captured alongside the city’s growing cultural diversity.
The forty-one photographers in this exhibition each had a different relationship to London– some visited fleetingly as tourists or on journalistic assignments, some arrived as refugees, while others came to live in the UK permanently. It is their shared experience of encountering London with the eye of an outsider that informed their perspectives and shaped the photographs they took, resulting in work as diverse as the city itself.
The works in Another London are selected from a unique collection of 1,400 photographs, The Eric and Louise Franck London Collection, which was brought together over twenty years and has been generously promised as a donation to Tate by Eric and Louise Franck.
event venue
Editor choice (SD)