Адрес: St James's Palace, St. James's, London SW1A 1BQ
When Frances Sally Day portrayed Queen Victoria and her family at the Royal residence on the Isle of Wight, a woman photographer was a rather rare phenomenon. It was 1859 and the English lords were busily planning charity evenings, but the most powerful head of state in the world was a woman and she chose to entrust her public image to a woman’s point of view. Despite the costs and technical difficulty of an art in its infancy, Day had a studio in Piccadilly, exhibited at the Royal Academy and competed successfully in prestigious national contests. Today, her photos are in good company in the Royal Collection, where it is possible to retrace the history of photography from the female point of view from the 1800s to today. Pioneering experiments, crucial technical innovations and revolutions like that of colour film are all touched upon in this thrilling voyage. Queen Alexandra (1844 - 1925) practiced photography, thanks to the new Kodak cameras that made the art much simpler and manageable. The modernist portraits of Dorothy Wilding, the delicate platinum prints of Alice Hughes, the socially relevant photos of Lee Miller and Toni Frissel are just some examples of the variety of styles and approaches. Besides being a means of artistic expression, photography offered women independence - “A life worth living, without monotony,” in “constant and pleasurable contact with humanity,” wrote photographer Olive Edis, before become an official reporter covering World War One.
In 1924, the V&A received a gift of over 80.000 playbills, programmes and objects from collector Gabrielle Enthoven. The gift marked the beginning of the museum's collection of theatre material, which has since evolved into the UK's National Collection of Performing Arts.
An exhibition to tell the story of Pictorialism: the first international movement of artistic photography, which developed throughout the world from 1880 to 1960.
An exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery dedicated to Stanisław Wyspiański, one of the most important Polish artists of the 19th century. Sixteen portraits on display, many of which have never been shown before in Britain, to tell the story of the artistic talent of a leading figure of the modernist movement, Young Poland.
Elevating fashion and portrait photography to an art form, Cecil Beaton's photographs defined an era, capturing beauty, glamour and star power in the interwar and postwar eras.