LONDON NIGHTS – the Museum of London
London Nights at the Museum of London is a exhibition of photography that features scenes of the city after dark, evoking sensations of wonder, menace and voyeurism.
Bringing together over 200 works, the exhibition reflects on many diverse aspects of London life, from the excitement of the lights of Piccadilly Circus to the forgotten underside of the M25, via the city’s suburban reaches. The show is divided into three distinct sections:
- London illuminated
- Dark Matters
- Switch on, switch off
Open until the 11th November
THE SHAPE OF LIGHT – Tate Modern, London
The Shape of Light aligns photography with abstraction, and asserts quite definitively that nothing has to “have been” in order to become the subject of a photograph. Many of the works on display – which begin in the early 20th century, alongside the work of painters who were vorticists, cubists and expressionists – were created without cameras, using photosensitive materials to produce works on paper that echo what contemporaries were doing with paint.
The exhibition explores the juxtaposition of the painters and photographers who explored surrealism and how it could be manipulated in all artistic mediums.
Until 14th October
THE GREAT BRITISH SEASIDE – The National Maritime Museum, London
From the abandoned piers to the dazzling arcades, celebrate the British seaside through the lenses of Britain’s most popular photographers, featuring Tony Ray-Jones, David Hurn and Simon Roberts and new work by Martin Parr. Examine the ambiguities and absurdities of seaside life through this major exhibition of over 100 photographs. All four photographers share a love of the seaside which reveals itself in playful and often profound representations of the British by the sea while still bringing their own distinctive take on the seaside experience. Ray-Jones gives us a social anthropologist’s view, Hurn’s is a nostalgic love letter to the beach, Parr provides an often-satirical examination of class and cliché while Roberts explores our collective relationship with, and impact on, the coast.
Until 30th September
Great British Seaside exhibition