Given the weighty triumvirate of sponsors behind this exhibition of rarely-displayed and unseen photographic works from the V&A archives – the V&A Museum, Photo London fair and Somerset House have all teamed up – you might expect an impressive selection of weird and wonderful images that offer a compelling glimpse into the over 500,000-strong collection held by the institution. And the timespan covered is not insubstantial: there’s everything from early photograms right up to digitally-manipulated works. Unfortunately, this breadth of scope does little to bring the otherwise unambitious exhibition to life.
‘Beneath the Surface’ proves a thematic red herring, and there is a sense that more specific themes were perhaps considered, then abandoned. For instance, there are dozens of photos of waterways, and street scenes of London, but no story to bring them together. So why not just make the exhibition about water? Or the city’s topography? Or anything to serve as narrative glue? As a shopfront for the V&A’s photography collection, it fails to impress.
There are some fantastic works on display here. The prosaically-named ‘Trees in Summer and Winter’ series by Henry Irving (1900) are quietly powerful. Ackroyd & Harvey’s huge ‘living grass’ photograph ‘Mother and Child’ (1998) – in which light-sensitive chlorophyll is manipulated to create shadow and light – has a fuzzy Gerhard Richter-ish quality that captivates. Photos taken by Nigel Shafran for the ‘V&A Annual Report 2012/13’ offer an amusing look at the more banal aspects of the museum – laptop plugs, stacks of boxes – while the photos are also strangely serene. Despite these highlights, however, the exhibition might have been better as a free display in a foyer, rather than taking up one of Somerset House’s gallery spaces.
Ananda Pellerin