Study visit - V&A Print room

19th April Study visit V&A Print Room

This was a fantastic study visit. Being able to handle historic prints was unbelievable. My favourite was an image by Henri Cartier Bresson

I had been to the V&A just previous to this visit and had visited the history of photography exhibition but the chance to see the prints close up also revealed a lot about how images appear online or in a glossy magazine or photo book. What was good to see was what the process looks like.  What an albumen print looks like and how it differs to a silver nitrate print. When you see these online they look amazing and somehow seem to be at an unobtainable level but to see them up close you see that the print even the great ones look nothing like their online versions which seem to have an added gloss to them. Holding the print I your hand says, yes this is a great picture and the artistry is there to see but it was made by human hands which have left their mark.