U1C Event Review

On Wednesday 24^th March after a two-hour train journey I arrived at the National Portrait Gallery, to see primarily the work of portrait photographer Irving Penn.

This exhibition housed in the National Portrait Gallery, London was on between March and May 2010 and entry was £10. The exhibition which features over 120, silver and platinum print from his carer in photography, from the last seven decades.

The exhibition was fantastic seeing his work, which spans out over a lifetime. The work was hanged in order, which it was taken so when I walked around the images, it was like taking a step back in history. You could clearly see the change in years, locations, the subjects and their tools and how his style has changed over the years. The cleaver think was when there was a series of images hanged together the end two images who looking out the next two was looking in and the centre image was looking at you the viewer and there was a number of points in the room which was like this. Is this something that he was thinking about when taking the images?

As one of few young people there at the time. I think anyone remotely interested in photography should visit the exhibition as there will be something you could get from it, for example a student studying black and white photography, a photographer or a framer of images. What was good about this is some of the work you can see anywhere else!

After a short walk and seeing the sites of London I visited the Photographers Gallery, London. I went see to see the winners and other entries to the Deuthche Borse Photography prize 2010. Photographers included: Anna Fox, Zoe Leonard, Sophie Ristelhueber and Donovan Wylie.

Once again this set of images was fantastic and inspiring to look at. This exhibition featured a wide range of different types of photography and what made it interesting for me to look at. What I also liked was available near to the image was the photographers background information and story behind the images. However, I did find in disappointing that the one of the images was not there and there was so much space in the room , there was a lot of space between the images and different photographers but may be to help the viewer think about what there have just seen before moving on.

As this was a free event I would recommend this event to others to visit to see the wide range of different photographic styles but I would say it worth travelling far to see. The images are very good but I don’t know how much more you get going to the Gallery to looking to them on the web.