Museum Mondays

A subset of my book club has decided to try and take advantage of all the museums in London by actually going out and seeing them. I know, novel idea right? Last Friday (the unofficial start of the Museum Monday series) we went to the National Portrait Gallery to see the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition. Unfortunately the exhibit ended this weekend, otherwise I would highly suggest going to see it, it was quite interesting. (Although we all disagreed with the winning entries, so there was that.) On Monday we went to the Imperial War Museum to see Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin.

This too was a really interesting exhibit. Over the course of his career Don McCullin photographed wars and conflict in Vietnam, Cambodia and Berlin amongst other places. In recent years he has been photographing still lifes and landscapes, and doing some humanitarian-like photography such as of the AIDS epidemic, all of which are greatly contrasted to the many photos he took that highlight the horrors of war. I would recommend this exhibit to anyone interested in photography, if only to see the impressive work he was able to do while under such extreme pressure and in such dangerous situations. One of the informational plaques stated that during the Vietnam war, while embedded with troops, he had to deal with the technical aspects of photography while also coming under fire. I think "technical aspects" is putting it mildly considering the circumstances.

We did not walk through the rest of the museum, but it seemed interesting enough to warrant another visit, so there's that too. But I do think that the Don McCullin exhibit is reason enough to hike down to the Lambeth/Elephant and Castle area to check out the Imperial War Museum. Museum Monday  #1 - success.