{"id":9196,"date":"2012-08-04T13:24:13","date_gmt":"2012-08-04T12:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=9196"},"modified":"2012-08-04T13:29:54","modified_gmt":"2012-08-04T12:29:54","slug":"photographers-gallery-continues-to-disappoint-getty-gallery-enthrals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/photographers-gallery-continues-to-disappoint-getty-gallery-enthrals\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographers Gallery continues to disappoint, Getty Gallery enthrals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Once of my very favourite central London haunts, the Photographers Gallery has suffered an\u00a0expansion program that has conspired to make the experience considerably worse over the years.<\/p>\n

The Gallery seems to have been\u00a0driven by a profile-raising agenda in recent years, presumably in a quest to\u00a0attract more\u00a0sponsorship dosh, and it’s all the worse for it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Gallery was at its best when it occupied two\u00a0buildings\u00a0in Great Newport Street<\/a>, Leicester Square – the setting was more informal, and you didn’t have to keep on climbing flight after flight of stairs to see anything.<\/p>\n

At the heart of the old Gallery was the main room with its lovely cafe, run by Billy (who had been there for as long as I can recall) backed up by his team of friendly staff.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Photographers’ Gallery moved to its new four storey site<\/a>\u00a0by Oxford Circus in December 2008. The entire building then closed after a couple of years to allow substantial redevelopment work to take place, with\u00a0the cafe staff unceremoniously being shown the door<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Relaunching in May 2012, the building has now been extended upwards<\/a>, with the warm and inviting original cafe being booted out to be replaced by a bland ground floor affair which seems rather cold and impersonal.<\/p>\n

It’s all slick, clean and tidy of course, but there’s no art on the walls, and the black marbled floor and white walls make it feel more like a hospital than an art gallery.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There’s now six floors on offer, but not all are showing off any work. Last weekend, one room had turned into a library for looking at a collection of\u00a0Japanese\u00a0photo books, while\u00a0the Camera\u00a0Obscura\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0working as usual.<\/p>\n

The only floor that really works is the top floor and it was the only one that had any work that\u00a0excited\u00a0me on my last visit.<\/p>\n

Shinier, but worse<\/strong><\/p>\n

I used to love visiting the Photographers Gallery- even if I didn’t like the work on show, the cafe was always worth popping into.<\/p>\n

Sadly, I don’t share their version for a bigger, shinier, more\u00a0corporate version, so my visits are going to be far less frequent, and I’ll drink my coffee somewhere where’s there’s a warmer\u00a0atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Chat about the gallery here:\u00a0Photographer\u2019s Gallery reopens and it’s a bit meh<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It’s not all bad news though, because in recent years the nearby\u00a0Getty Images Gallery<\/a> has been putting on some fantastic shows<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I loved their current Londoners At Play exhibition, displaying some fantastic archive photographs taken over the last hundred years or so of Londoners having fun.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There’s some\u00a0fabulous\u00a0photos on show.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Situated close to Oxford Circus tube, you can find Getty Images at\u00a0\u00a046 Eastcastle Street, London, W1W 8DX.<\/p>\n

Admission is free, and the opening\u00a0hours are Monday \u2013 Friday: 10am \u2013 5.30pm, Saturday: 12 \u2013 5.30pm. It’s well worth a visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once of my very favourite central London haunts, the Photographers Gallery has suffered an\u00a0expansion program that has conspired to make the experience considerably worse over the years. The Gallery seems … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[194,17,193],"tags":[34,10,18],"class_list":["post-9196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-london-features","category-photos","category-places","tag-art","tag-london","tag-photography"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/photographers-gallery-getty-02.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-2ok","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9196"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9279,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196\/revisions\/9279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}