PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURES
Photographers in Focus
This section of the photography site looks in detail at photographers who have a substantial body of work in the V&A permanent collection. Here you can find out more about each photographer listed, including biographical details, working methods, V&A links, as well as potential avenues for further research.
The V&A fosters links with photographers and supports them in their work. This has been the case from the beginnings of the museum in the 19th century and continues today. Julia Margaret Cameron, for example, first donated and sold her work to the V&A in 1865 and corresponded frequently with Sir Henry Cole, founding Director of the Museum. Bill Brandt is another prominent example and had close connections with the museum, selecting photographs, many of which became part of the collection, for 'The Land' exhibition in 1975. Brandt's own work was most recently shown in a centenary retrospective at the V&A in 2004.
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Ilse Bing
Ilse Bing was one of several leading European women photographers of the inter-war period. Born in Frankfurt in 1899, she initially pursued an academic career, but gave this up to concentrate on photography, moving to Paris, the capital of the avant-garde arts scene, in 1930.
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Bill Brandt
The V&A celebrates the centenary of the birth of Bill Brandt (1904-1983), Britain's best-loved photographer of modern times, with a stunning retrospective. With over 150 mainly vintage, gelatin-silver prints from the Bill Brandt Archive, the exhibition displays the finest selection of his rare and famous prints to be seen in Britain for over thirty years.
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Benjamin Brecknell Turner
Benjamin Brecknell Turner (1815-94) was one of the first, and remains one of the greatest, British photographers. His images were highly praised during his lifetime for their rustic beauty and grandeur.
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Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron was an ambitious and devoted pioneer of the art of photography. She was visionary in her belief of the 'divine' power of the medium, daring in her experiments with image making and persistent in the promotion of her work. She remains one of the most important figures in the history of photography to this day.
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Lady Clementina Hawarden
Lady Clementina Hawarden (1822-65) was an amateur photographer who lived and made photographs in London in the mid 19th century. Hawarden was respected among the photographic circles of her time, and her work has stood up to the scrutiny of history and is still influential today.
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Frederick Hollyer
Frederick Hollyer adapted new technical developments in photography to create a unique visual record of London life at the dawn of the 20th century. His portrait photographs offer us a glimpse into late-Victorian and Edwardian celebrity culture. Their sitters range from the writer H.G. Wells to the Nobel-prize-winning discoverer of argon Lord Rayleigh, from Princess Louise to William Morris.
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Curtis Moffat
Curtis Moffat (1887-1949) created dynamic abstract photographs, innovative colour still lifes, and glamorous society portraits. The recent donation to the V&A of the Curtis Moffat archive presents an opportunity for Moffat to be reinstated among the most notable artists, designers and society figures of the early 20th-century European avant-garde.
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Linnaeus Tripe
Linnaeus Tripe (1822-1902) is known for his photographs of India and Burma taken in the 1850s. It was the time that nascent photographic processes were advancing, and photography was increasingly recognised for its usefulness in making apparently fast and 'truthful' records.