Exhibitions

Key Works - An Overview of British Photography.

Key Works presents photographs from the collection to chart the ways in which British photographers have responded to the world around them from the documentary strategies of Bill Brandt and Picture Post photographers such as Bert Hardy and Kurt Hutton, through Roger Mayne and Tony Ray Jones, and on to... Read more

Behind Closed Doors

Behind Closed Doors looks at the domestic interior in British Photography. It takes as its starting point three of the most important bodies of work by Bill Brandt: his first book, appropriately entitled  The English at Home (1935), his documentation of poverty in northern England, and his pioneering domestic nudes. It explores... Read more

Natural Selection

As well as exploring the rural life of the village and countryside, many British photographers have explored nature and addressed the natural environment. At times these depictions are mundane, and at other times nostalgic, romanticised, political and personal. Read more

Land of Make Believe

A central aspect of the Hyman Collection's holidings of British photography addresses masquerade, performance, costume, ritual, parade. There is a strong thread of fantasy and a variety of works that respond to eccentricity, constructions of identity, and the heritage industry. From the drama of the street to more internal monologues,... Read more

Country Life

The Hyman Collection of British Photography includes many works which address the countryside including both landscapes and depictions of village life. These include depictions of the land as in Fay Godwin's pastoral idylls, John Blakemore and Thomas Cooper's metaphoric treatment of the land, John Davies's exploration of industry, Jem Southam's... Read more

Capital City

The Hyman Collection of British Photography includes works from England, Nothern Ireland, Scotland and Wales that trace the lives of communities in rural and urban parts of Britain. In addition the collection includes a strong holding of work which focuses on London and its various regions and explores class and... Read more

Body Politics. From Welfare State to Personal Wellbeing

With the Collection covering many different phases in British photographic history, we are in a position to see how approaches to these subjects have changed over the past 80 years, and how priorities and perspectives have shifted as photographic practice has moved from the social and the political to the... Read more

Sign of the Times. Word and Image in British Photography

Photographs in the Hyman Collection collection allow one to explore the use of word and image in British Photogtraphy and allow one to chart a number of stratagies by which text is used to provide a commentary on what is shown or to deepen its meaning. At its most pobvious... Read more

Queen and Country

The Hyman Collection includes many works which present folk customs, constructions of national identity and that address forms of patriotism and nationalism. At their centre is the flag and references to royalty, prime ministers and the establishment. Read more

2020 Art in Isolation

Like everyone else, over January and February we watched with increasing horror as Coronavirus spread around the world. With Claire working in the NHS we were acutely aware of the issues within London hospitals, especially after she was redeployed to work in ITU (intensive care) on the Covid ward. So... Read more

Picture Post: photo-journalism and the internationalising of British photography.

The Hyman Collection is delighted to have acquired an exceptionally rare complete, un-bound, run of the famous Picture Post magazine in impeccable condition. The collection also has many of the actual vintage photographs used in the magazine, which often bear the original instructions and mark-ups for publication, by photographers such... Read more

Cultures of Masculinity

Cultures of Masculinity takes its title from Tim Edward's social, cultural and theoretical study of masculinity published in 2006. It presents photographs from the 1930s to the present to explore the ways in which British photographers have addressed the subject of masculinity. Read more

Beside the Seaside

As an Island Nation the coast and beach are highly charged culural and national symbols. British photographers have responded to the subjeect in a variety of ways. Bill Brandt provides the emblematic image of someone on a seaside holiday. Keith Vaughan provides pictures of innocence just moments before the outbreak... Read more

A Night in London

A Night in London explores the legacy of Bill Brandt. A focused selection looks at London lives and turns its back on the London of tourists - the neon lighting of Leicester Square, the illuminated monuments - to propose something more intimate. Brandt's  Soho Interior is echoed in the interiors of Karen... Read more

Street Theatre

The Hyman Collection of British Photography has a number of works which take as their setting the streets of Britain. At times what is captured is an unguarded moment but often the photographer explores the performative element of what is shown and foregrounds the relationship between the camera and the... Read more

Childhood

A central thread of the Hyman Collection is intimacy. Pictures of children are a leitmotif since the earliest days of photography and the collection includes a range of responses to childhood with a particular emphasis on works in which there is an evident closeness or familiairty between photographer and subject.... Read more

Women Pioneers

In 1903 the photographer H.S. Mendelssohn asserted that 'Portraiture is now in the hands of the women'. This was a remarkable development. Just a few years earlier there had been only one West End photography studio run by a woman but by the Edwardian period women had risen to prominence.... Read more

Spitting Image. Margaret Thatcher and the Golden Age of Political Satire

The 1980s under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher was one of the most divisive decades in twentieth centruy British history. A decade of enormous cultural, social, political and economic change, this was the context in which many of the greatest British photographers of the last half century established their practice... Read more

Votes for Women

The Hyman Collection consists of an equal number of works by male and female photographers and particularly seeks to support young female phoographers. One theme of the photographs in the collection by women is identity and self-identity. In the centenary year of women getting the vote, this exhibition explores the... Read more