Top photography exhibitions in London

Fag-stained, booze-drenched, stumbling and slurring: John Deakin captured the lows of Soho at its height. He was the photographer of choice for Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and all the other artistic degenerates of central London in the 1950s and ’60s. He documented their fracturing lives, and he was commissioned by Francis Bacon to take photos that would become the basis for some of his most important paintings. 

What is working-class England if not grey, sullen, broken, monochrome, damp and sad? That’s the classic vision of this crumbling nation presented to us by photography, film and TV. But in the early 1990s, photographer Nick Waplington rocked the metaphorical boat by showing another side of England; one filled with colour, laughter, love and happiness.

Death, pain and injustice course through this year’s Deutsche Borse Photography Foundation Prize. It’s in the mass graves of Hrair Sarkissian, the feminist ire of Valie Export, the indigenous erasure of Rajesh Vangad and Gauri Gill, and the historical trauma of Lebohang Kganye. 

The guts of society are hidden away, but Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has spent his long career eviscerating them and putting them on display.

Two artists, separated by a century and an ocean, laid out a framework for how the camera could construct feminine identity. In 1800s England, Julia Margaret Cameron took pictures of garlanded Victorian beauties dressed as mythological figures, lying wantonly and forlornly on divans. In 1970s America, Francesca Woodman created a world of blurry nude art students thrashing about in warehouses. Despite the vast chasms of time, aesthetics and subject matter that separated the two, the National Portrait Gallery argues that they shared so much as to be almost inseparable. It’s not hugely convincing. 

Billing itself as 'the world’s most prestigious photo competition', the World Press Photo Exhibition is returning to London after a seven year absence. The works in this year's show,(its 64th edition) were culled down from 61,062 entries by 3,581 photographers from 130 countries, creating an impressively international celebration of contemproary photojournalism. 

World Press Photo Exhibition is at Borough Yards, May 3-27. £15. More details here. 

Why did a young photographer spend five years obsessively photographing a single street in west London, visiting it 27 times and taking 1,400 photos?