PHOTO LONDON: FEATURING BENEATH THE SURFACE

'A Specially Commissioned Exhibition of Rarely Seen Works From The V&A's Photographs Collection 20th May - 24th August 2015.' London's Somerset House is where John F. W. Herschel supposedly defined the term "photography" in 1839, so it's fitting that it hosted London's biggest photography fair in May 2015, featuring three exhibitions, an installation, a program of special talks, and over 70 participating galleries from across the globe. Flipping through the pages of this tome, readers will glimpse the variety of works on display, from vintage images dating from the dawn of photography to boundary-pushing contemporary photos - Jack Nicolson in clown face make-up, Catherine Deneuve in a triptych with eyes moving, rainbow colour geometric designs, touched-up landscapes, painted nudes, kissing couples, a collage cosmonaut, a tiny black boy. The Francis Frith albumen print from 1857 of Thebes shows a clarity of detail in the Egyptian hieroglyphs with the two sitting massive god statues; a blue-toned Midnight in the Antarctic Summer 1910 from George Herbert Ponting; stuffed tigers and leopard print upholstery and animal skin rugs on walls and ceilings in an interior from Jodhpur 1980; and an entire section encased in beautiful red thick paper on the natural history photography of Sebastiao Salgado of tribespeople colouring their bodies, a marine iguana which looks like a scaley hand and large sand dunes in Algeria 2009. Every page is one to pore over. This big glamorous teNueues publication, specially commissioned from the exhibition of rarely seen works from the Victoria and Albert Museum's Photographs Collection May to August 2015, reflects the city's place within the annals of photographic history. Paperback, 240 pages. 21.5 x 28.7cm.
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