GALLERY photographic & art displays
Portraits from the 2015 Taylor Wessing Prize![]()
At first glance David Stewart’s Five Girls 2014, the winning entry in this year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, is a very ordinary scene. Five young women sit behind a table... Read more... |
Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art, Victoria & Albert Museum![]()
Every object tells a story, nowhere more so than in a museum. The Victoria & Albert has been busy retelling as many stories as it can by rearranging, refurbishing, adding and... Read more... |
The World of Charles and Ray Eames, Barbican![]()
Chairs, chairs, chairs, as far as the eye can see. Plywood or plastic shells, some decorated with hilarious drawings of jolly nudes by Saul Steinberg (main picture), others in all... Read more... |
Sticky fingers: Conductors at the 2015 Proms
Every summer at the BBC Proms the world's greatest conductors are captured in the waiting lens of Chris Christodoulou. His official portraits are sent out to the press straight after most concerts... Read more... |
Gallery: Philip Jones Griffiths' Vietnam![]()
The most celebrated reportage to come out the Vietnam War was Michael Herr’s Dispatches, rightly acclaimed as the most visceral journey into the dark heart of America’s first military... Read more... |
Gallery: Christina Broom's Soldiers and Suffragettes![]()
There were female pioneers of photography before Christina Broom, most notably Julia Margaret Cameron. And others have hidden their light under a bigger bushel: Vivian Meier's body of work... Read more... |
Gallery: The Drowned Man of Punchdrunk![]()
Punchdrunk entered the world of theatre through a side door in the basement. The company navigated a strange path around abandoned warehouses on the edge of town, via the odd wrong turn and sundry... Read more... |
Tough & Tender: Sheila Rock's English Seascapes![]()
I had never really photographed landscape. But I spent many wonderful weekends in Suffolk and Norfolk along the coast. This project began when I just decided to photograph the sea in a very... Read more... |
'I'm the photographer. Any nudity? Any fighting?'![]()
We are sitting in the lobby of the National Theatre in the early afternoon waiting for the photocall for Dara to begin. Six or seven photographers, one woman, all dressed in jeans and... Read more... |
Boys on Film: Duran Duran's '84 tour![]()
In 1984 Duran Duran were at the height of their fame. Seven and the Ragged Tiger, the band’s third studio album, became their first (and only) number one soon after its... Read more... |
Gallery: Honoré Daumier and Paula Rego - a conversation across time![]()
Baudelaire called him a “pictorial Balzac” and said he was the most important man “in the whole of modern art”, while Degas was only a little less effusive, claiming him as one of the three... Read more... |
Maestri: Conductors at the 2014 Proms![]()
Chris Christodoulou is the official Proms photographer, writes David Nice. From his uniquely privileged position behind a velvet curtain, he captures the white heat of performance. The... Read more... |
Gallery: CBeebies Prom![]()
In recent years the BBC Proms have woken up to the idea that an audience for classical music can be captured young. The Doctor Who Prom was the first to harness a BBC brand and turn it into a... Read more... |
Gallery: International Exchanges, Tate St Ives![]()
This summer, Tate St Ives turned 21. And this makes it as good a time as any for an exhibition repositioning the artists who were associated with St Ives, the small harbour town in Cornwall, where... Read more... |
Gallery: Stars of the Glyndebourne Chorus![]()
Its constituent parts come in all sizes, tall and small, compact or full-bodied, and span the ages. But put them all together and an operatic chorus is a vast but single organism that sings – and... Read more... |
Lumiere Festival 2013, Durham![]()
The trumpeting of a lone elephant can be heard all around Durham city centre, blasting across the River Wear. The organisers of Artichoke’s Lumiere Festival, now in its third biennial year, have... Read more... |
Gallery: Only in England - Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr![]()
Tony Ray-Jones is one of the hidden greats of British social documentary photography. A huge influence on photographers working today, he documented the English at play with great empathy and... Read more... |
Gallery: Derwent Art Prize![]()
You can use a computer to draw, as Hockney does, every day on his iPad, yet, despite all the technological advances the 21st century has thrown our way, the pencil continues to be the... Read more... |
Wild things: Conductors at the 2013 Proms![]()
"What I’m looking for is that fraction of a second that at least I could remember the concert by." At the start of the 2013 BBC Proms season, photographer Chris Christodoulou let ... Read more... |
Prom 2: The Doctor Who Prom in Pictures![]()
There's the First Night and there's the Last Night. Nowadays among the staples of the two-month world-famous festival of music at the Royal Albert Hall, there is also the Doctor Who Prom. Last... Read more... |
The Fine Art of Shooting Conductors
Chris Christodoulou has been photographing conductors at the BBC Proms since 1981. Many attending the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall may well have attempted to spot him. They can give up on that... Read more... |
Performers: A Season in Photographs![]()
A stage performance in any art form communicates through sound and motion. A photographer's task is to capture the dramatic experience in the silence and stillness of the 2D image. In the worlds... Read more... |
PUNK+ - Sheila Rock's portraits from the frontline![]()
The historians of punk are in full flow. Jon Savage's book England's Dreaming and the BBC Four's documentary series Punk Britannia have documented much of what needs to be said.... Read more... |
Gallery: The Springtime of the Renaissance![]()
The images in this gallery illustrate some of the links and juxtapositions made in The Springtime of the Renaissance. Classical statues which influenced Florentine artists, works reunited... Read more... |
Gallery: Art Projects and The Catlin Guide at the London Art Fair
The London Art Fair may not have the international heft or VIP glamour of Frieze, but for 25 years it’s been the place to see and buy the best of British modern art. While the main fair features... Read more... |
Photo Gallery: They That Are Left![]()
For the past 10 years Brian David Stevens has been taking photographic portraits of veterans on Remembrance Sunday. The images play on the notion of the unknown soldier. Each subject is portrayed... Read more... |
Photo Gallery: Everything was Moving - Photography from the 60s and 70s, Barbican Gallery![]()
Take the day, and a stiff drink afterwards, as you’ll need it for this thoughtful and deeply disturbing exhibition. A picture, goes the cliché, is worth a thousand words, and nowhere more so than... Read more... |
The Art of Conducting 2012
The BBC Proms are steeped in traditions, many admirable, some arcane, the odd one ever so slightly maddening. In the short life of The Arts Desk - we turned three on Sunday, the... Read more... |
The Hitchcock Players: Ingrid Bergman, Notorious![]()
Before the blonde, there was Bergman. In the second half of the 1940s, Hitchcock cast Ingrid Bergman three times, and on each occasion asked her to incarnate a different kind of leading lady. In... Read more... |
Intimate Exposure: Marilyn Monroe 50 Years On![]()
It’s 50 years since Marilyn Monroe died alone on the night of August 4, 1962, from swallowing too many sleeping pills. The sad story soon became the stuff of legend. When they found her, she was... Read more... |
Gallery: Collecting the Olympic Games, British Library![]()
As London 2012 finally settles into the blocks for its two-week dash after seven years of preparation, the British Library has cast a nostalgic look back to the two previous Olympiads hosted by... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Latitude Festival 2012: Squeeze, Squelch![]()
As a giggling toddler posed for a photograph next to a pink sheep, a man in a Barbour jacket moaned about losing his garlic-crusher. On the lake, smitten newlyweds enjoyed a gondola ride, while,... Read more... |
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