I made a quick trip over to London last week and managed to squeeze in a visit to the Photographers' Gallery new location on Ramillies Street. Summer shows can often be a disappointment: place-holders while everyone is away on holiday. So this André Kertész show came as a very pleasant surprise.
The show includes mostly vintage prints, taken over a period of 65 years (1915-1980), on the subject of reading. It seems oddly appropriate to have an exhibition of vintage works by one of photography's 'traditional' masters on the act of reading, just when film photography and printed publications are becoming somewhat endangered species. The prints are in excellent condition and the show is a great reminder of just how much of a master of composition Kertész was.
Definitely worth a visit if you are in London. And while you are at it, I would suggest throwing in a trip to the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. Not to see the Jeff Koons Popeye show, which I really can live without, but to spend a few hours with the Japanese architectural pair, SANAA's excellent summer pavilion.
André Kertész: On Reading The Photographers' Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies Street, London. 17 July - 4 October 2009.