In the years between 1930 and 1980, some of the best-known photographers from around the world came to London and made the dynamic city their subject. These artists cast their foreigner’s gaze on red buses, bowler hats, and pearly kings as well as street artists, beggars, and buskers. This collection of 180 classic 20th-century photographs highlights the city as a richly diverse metropolis, full of contrast. From portraits to reportage, from social realism to whimsy and humor, the variations in technique and attitude displayed in the responses London provoked from visitors chronicle the development of photography itself.
Helen Delaney is assistant curator and Simon Baker is curator of photography and international art at Tate. Ben Gidley is senior researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society at Oxford University. Mick Gidley is emeritus professor of American literature & culture at the University of Leeds.