I wouldn’t quite describe the V&A’s photography holdings as a hidden gem in our national collections, but they’re still surprisingly little known to many of us. Part of the problem is the museum’s eclecticism. But also it has never provided space equivalent to that given to sculpture, design, decorative arts, the Raphael Cartoons, and its other world-leading collections. Until now.
The Photography Centre expands the V&A’s photographic galleries from three to seven rooms – adding grand spaces that finally do justice to the riches it’s built up over 170 years. The necessity for the spaces is brought into sharp focus by the fact that even in these expanded displays, it includes just 600 of the – wait for it – 800,000 items in the museum’s photography collection.
