Gallery: Embedded with the Territorial Army

For one of my final years of university assignments (I was an International Journalism student at Liverpool John Moore's University), I contacted the Territorial Army to see whether they would let me come along on a training exercise. They agreed, and I spent a long week-end in the rain and the fog, chasing people holding guns with my Canon.

This was back in 2003, and I just re-discovered and re-edited the original files. I remember clearly editing them, one by one, in Photoshop, the first time around. This time. I gave them the Lightroom treatment, in order to make them look like older photographs; Like the ones you might see coming out of the makeshift dark-rooms in conflicts in the 1950s and 1960s, perhaps.

The photos are in the gallery carousel above. Enjoy!

Shiny new photography gallery at the V&A

Come the autumn there will be a shiny new photography gallery at the V&A so that its extensive collection of photographs – some dating back to 1839 – can be shown off in the fashion to which it should become accustomed. When we say that the museum’s collection is extensive, apparently it is one of the largest in the world, which I suppose is only to be expected for the world’s greatest museum of art and design. (As it calls itself.)

The idea behind the new gallery, which has been converted from a study-space, is to chronicle the development of photography from 1839 to the 1960s as well as provide in-depth themed exhibitions. The first of these ‘In Focus’ exhibitions will feature Victorian portrait photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The Brig, by Gustave Le Grey (1856) V&A images

The new gallery is due to open on 25 October, and it’ll be free to enter. Yippeedee!

The V&A is on the Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL.

(Featured image: Circe, by Julia Margaret Cameron (c.1865) V&A images.)