Larry and The Shed

An interesting day visiting two contrasting exhibitions of work by important, influential and creative portrait and fashion photographers.

The first was the Man Ray exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, showing 150 original prints by a man closely associated with Dada and Surrealism. The other was the Norman Parkinson exhibition at the National Theatre, celebrating 100 years since his birth.

Norman Parkinson was some 23 years younger than Man Ray, but there was a considerable overlap in their working lives. However, their styles were very different. Man Ray worked almost exclusively indoors, in the studio. Norman Parkinson, however, broke the mould and concentrated on outdoors, location photography.

The Man Ray exhibition showed archive prints, mostly small (or very small). Although it is interesting to see these original prints, I would have liked to have seen a few larger, modern prints as well to allow a better exhibition experience. The Norman Parkinson exhibition used very large, modern prints which were powerful and striking, and worked well in the space allocated to them in the theatre foyer.

It is also worth noting that the National Theatre exhibition was free, whereas the National Portrait Gallery charged £14 per person before any discounts.

Anyway, outside the concrete edifice of the National Theatre is a new, bright red, temporary wooden building which is a new theatre space while some refurbishment is carried out inside the National. Angela Conner's statue of Laurence Olivier in the role of Hamlet now stares at this building, which hides from his view the theatre named after him. This new structure is known as "The Shed". I haven't had an opportunity to see a production inside this new theatre, but it does look quite interesting.