A talk delivered by Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, looking at photographs from the exhibition Island Stories: Fifty Years of Photography in Britain.

The talk relates to work in the exhibition Island Stories: Fifty Years of Photography in Britain, which features photographers including Maurice Broomfield, Elsbeth Juda, Roger Mayne, Don McCullin, Raymond Moore, Bill Brandt, Grace Robertson, Fay Godwin, Chris Killip, Martin Parr, Nigel Shafran, Peter Fraser, John R. J. Taylor, Mark Edwards and Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane. Featuring photographs drawn exclusively from the V&A collections, the exhibition includes over 80 photographs made in the UK since the 1950s. It focuses on individual projects, each of which tells a story. Collectively, they give a picture of life in Britain that reflects upon subjects ranging from landscape and industry to family and community.

Photographers working in Britain since the Second World War have captured the diversity of the island and its people: from the humourous to the contemplative, and from the gritty to the glamorous.  The rapidly shifting cultural environment after 1945 provided some of the greatest photographers of recent times with richly rewarding subject matter in the island of photography's birth.  Martin Barnes looks at photographs addressing these themes in relation to a display of works from the V&A permanent collection.

Island Stories: Fifty Years of Photography in Britain is the perfect accompaniment to the festival's The Great British Public exhibition showcasing a more recent selection of images from photographers working the length and breadth of the British Isles.

EXHIBITION

Island Stories British Photography From 1945 to the present
16 March – 19 September 2012
Victoria & Albert Museum | Room 38a
Free admission
 

V&A PRODUCTS TO INSPIRE YOU:

The Victoria and Albert Museum [Hardcover]

Art and Design for All: The Victoria and Albert Museum (Victoria & Albert Museum)

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  © Raymond Moore, Pembrokeshire, 1967
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  ‘Men with sacks of coal going home, winter, Sunderland’ (c1964) by Don McCullin