Photography and Video from The Walther Collection

A visit to this exhibition of more than a thousand images might well have made a nice accompaniment to reading our fashion and beauty special in this issue. At the core, the exhibition is all about the portrait, using a vast survey of photography over centuries and drawing on the terrific archives of The Walther Collection. It explores the ways in which photography empowers or disempowers, represents or re-presents, celebrates or critiques … and so on. It’s here to reflect on and be moved by and changed by. It shows the work of famous living artists – such as Ai Weiwei, Thomas Struth, Pieter Hugo and Ed Ruscha – alongside departed greats – Richard Avedon, August Sander, Bernd & Hilla Becher and others. Most powerfully and meaningfully, it puts the famous and most accepted alongside the anonymous artists or the very much little-known, often from marginalized cultures and places. It generally leaves us to consider the differences and the messages but also presents some conclusions and provocations. It’s a starting point for more exhibitions and publications that might want to review where we have got to with our visual culture … and how we might need or want to change.