The Centre for British Photography opened to the public in January 2023. It spans 8,000 square feet over three floors and present six simultaneous exhibitions. The centre also houses a photography sales gallery that sells photographs and books with all profits going to the charity. Admission is FREE.
Future Exhibitions
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Open Call. Countryside-Landscape-Environment
8 Jun - 24 Sep 2023 ROSIE BARNES RIO BLAKE ALIKI BRAINE ELAINE DUIGENAN MARIO POPHAM AARON SCHUMAN Read more -
Landscape Trauma
8 Jun - 24 Sep 2023 Landscape Trauma explores the different ways in which we impact the landscape and suggests that nature cannot be viewed without considering our relationship to it. Landscape is understood as a site of history and conflict as well as the subject of more recent human interventions that include farming, industry, oil... Read more -
John Blakemore. Seduced by Light
8 Jun - 24 Sep 2023 John Blakemore: Seduced by Light brings together black and white landscapes and unique artist’s books to explore movement and light. The exhibition includes black and white landscapes made in Wales and England. These range from early works that respond to the movement of water to later works taken in a... Read more -
Helen Sear
8 Jun - 24 Sep 2023 Helen Sear presents a series of large-scale works that combine multiple images to emphasise the indivisibility of the human and the natural worlds. In giving equal status to the human and natural, Sear observes the landscape as another body. In the lightbox Caetera Fumus a rapeseed field is pierced by... Read more -
Jermaine Francis. A Storied Ground
8 Jun - 24 Sep 2023 Jermaine Francis: A Storied Ground is the London premiere of this recent body of work. In it Francis uses multiple images to explore a Black presence in nature. Historically the Black figure is absent in the English landscape, which has a strong relationship to nationalism and colonialism. Francis considers how... Read more -
Mandy Barker. Plastic Soup
8 Jun - 24 Sep 2023 The work of award-winning photographer, Mandy Barker, is created to raise awareness of marine plastic pollution and has received global recognition. This is its first showing in London of Plastic Soup which was initially staged by the National Trust at Laycock Abbey. In this immersive exhibition Barker uses visual interpretation... Read more
Past Exhibitions
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Writing her own script. Women Photographers from the Hyman Collection
Photo London 2023. 10 - 14 May 2023 Writing her own Script celebrates many of the pioneering women photographers at work in Britain over the last 100 years. It charts a course from the 1930s to the present and provides an overview of photography in Britain that focuses on two strands: a humanistic documentary tradition and a more... Read more -
The English at Home
20th Century Photographs from the Hyman Collection 26 Jan - 28 May 2023 The English at Home: 20th Century Domestic Photographs from the Hyman Collection presents over 150 works to explore the central place of the home in British photography over the last century. The exhibition takes its title from one of the most important twentieth century photography publications, Bill Brandt’s first book,... Read more -
Jo Spence: Fairytales and Photography
Curated by the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive (Birkbeck, University of London) and the Centre for British Photography 26 Jan - 28 May 2023 Jo Spence (1934- 1992) is a key figure in British photography of the last fifty years. A photographer, writer, educator and photo therapist, her work has proved highly influential on subsequent generations of photographers and writers. Spence began her career as a commercial photographer, specialising in family portraits and wedding... Read more -
Headstrong: Women and Empowerment
Curated by Fast Forward: Women in Photography 26 Jan - 28 May 2023 Self-portraiture has always been a tool of empowerment for women. Societies have led us to believe that, as women, we have a certain place and need to perform in a certain way and this has been like wearing a straight jacket. Feminist politics have affected changes to these patriarchal ideas... Read more -
Natasha Caruana: Fairytale for Sale
26 Jan - 28 May 2023 Natasha Caruana's Fairytale for Sale is a recent acquisition by The Hyman Collection. The installation explores wedding customs in the UK, revealing the fantasy, performance and trophy moments of the traditional big day. The series consists of online adverts of brides wearing redundant wedding dresses. The smiling faces of the... Read more -
Andrew Bruce and Anna Fox: Spitting/Spitting Image
Commission by The Hyman Collection, 2015 26 Jan - 28 May 2023 In 2015 The Hyman Collection commissioned Andrew Bruce and Anna Fox to respond to the original Fluk and Law Spitting Image puppets of Margaret Thatcher and her Cabinet Ministers in our collection. One of the most popular British television programmes of the 1980s and 1990s, watched by an audience of... Read more -
Heather Agyepong: Wish You Were Here
26 Jan - 28 May 2023 In 2019 The Hyman Collection commissioned Heather Agyepong to respond to early twentieth century postcard imagery reflecting the dance craze in Europe, The Cake Walk. The resulting series was named Wish You Were Here (2020). Artist's Statement by Heather Agyepong: 'Unless we learn the lesson of self-appreciation and practice it,... Read more -
A Different Mirror. Photographs from the Hyman Collection.
Photo Oxford Festival, Oxford 15 Oct - 15 Nov 2021 A Different Mirror presents a dialogue between two generations of socially engaged photographers from the pioneering work of Jo Spence and Alexis Hunter, grounded in 1970s feminism, to the recent projects of three young artists: Heather Agyepong, Eliza Hatch and Bindi Vora. Selected from The Hyman Collection, the private collection... Read more -
Jo Spence: From Fairytales to Photo Therapy
Photographs from the Hyman Collection at Arnolfini, Bristol 19 Dec 2020 - 20 Jun 2021 Spence has been an integral figure within photographic discourse from the 1970s onwards. Throughout her diverse projects she is well known for her highly politicised approach to photography and the representation of her own struggles with cancer. From Fairy Tales to Phototherapy focuses on the intersection between arts, health... Read more -
A Picture of Health
Women Photographers from the Hyman Collection at Arnolfini, Bristol 14 Nov 2020 - 1 Jul 2021 The exhibition, which runs from 14 November to 21 February 2021, and its accompanying programme have been co-curated by the Arnolfini and the Hyman Collection as well as Creative Shift and Fresh Arts, Bristol's leading organisations, providing creative wellbeing activities, to adults who are experiencing or are vulnerable to, isolation... Read more -
Modern Nature
Photographs from the Hyman Collection at the Hepworth Wakefield 13 Jul 2018 - 22 Apr 2019 For the first time in human history, more people are living in urban environments than in the countryside, yet the impulse to seek out nature remains as strong as ever. This new exhibition of photographs by leading British photographers such as Shirley Baker, Bill Brandt, Anna Fox, Chris Killip, Martin... Read more -
The Hyman Collection Donation
Yale Centre for British Art 16 Jan - 29 Mar 2018 The Yale Center for British Art has expanded its collection of photographs through a generous gift of 125 works from the Londonbased collectors Claire and James Hyman. The gift includes prints by famed British photographers Bill Brandt (1904–1983), Tony Ray-Jones (1941–1972), and Martin Parr (b. 1952), and it introduces works... Read more
