Spring finally seems to be upon us! Apart from the usual list of exhibitions there is also the notable event of the Olympic torch passing through London next weekend. Should be pretty unique and due to it’s controversy you might even see some protests along the way.

Olympic Torch Relay
6th April

London will welcome the Olympic Flame on Sunday 6 April 2008, as part of the global Olympic Torch Relay in the run up to the Beijing Olympic Games. The torch will travel through ten London boroughs from Wembley to Greenwich, with each borough marking its arrival with entertainment and local events, bringing London’s colour and vibrancy to life. The Torch Relay in London ends at a grand finale at the Arena at North Greenwich climaxing with the spectacle of the arrival of the final torchbearer and the lighting of the Olympic Cauldron. More info here.

Magnum Photos Print Room
63 Gee Street, EC1

Steve McCurry: Asia - from 9th April
McCurry, best known for his iconic image of the Afghan girl with the piercing green eyes, recently published the book ‘In The Shadow Of The Mountains’ (Phaidon, 2007) where a large majority of portrait and landscape images in the exhibition have been sourced.
This exhibition features a large selection of images from Afghanistan, a country which has always held a fascination for McCurry and is where he first established his photographic career. He has since returned many times and always favours longer term projects where he can engage with his subject matter.
McCurry has a distinctive visual language; his photographs are contemplative and his style is based on strong compositions, direct portraiture and jewel-like colours. He is able to find beauty within the rubble of a Kabul landscape and expresses a celebration of racial diversity through his acclaimed portraiture.

Hoopers Gallery
15 Clerkenwell Close, EC1

Gilbert Garcin: Tout Peut Arriver - from 4th April
Gilbert Garcin creates photomontages which provide the settings (often absurd) for his fictional ‘Mr Everyone’.
There is a humour and universality about his work that immediately enables the viewer to relate to various human predicaments.
Critics have described his artistic vision as surrealist,but Garcin feels this is only true in terms of his vision of absurdity. He relates far more strongly to Magritte than to Dali.

Proud Galleries – Central
Buckingham Street, WC2

Ali Folio - until 11th May
An intimate portrait of Muhammad Ali as seen through the lens of internationally acclaimed photographer Sonia Katchian. The only collection of its kind, this exhibition is the most intimate photographic portrait of Ali ever seen, shot all over the world alongside his family, friends and close travelling companions. 30 years since he won his third and final World Heavyweight Championship, these images celebrate the world’s favourite sporting hero at the pinnacle of his career.

Host Gallery
1 Honduras Street, EC1

Judah Passow: Shattered Dreams - until 25th April
A new exhibition of compelling photography by Judah Passow, one of the UK’s leading photojournalists. In the run up to the 60th anniversary of the declaration of Independence of the State of Israel on May 14th, Shattered Dreams revisits the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Israel, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, and Lebanon.
Photographed as newspaper and magazine assignments over the past 25 years, Judah’s images are more than a journalistic record of conflict and turmoil. They are the product of a very personal journey of exploration across the emotional landscape of the country in which he was born, and for whose survival he once wore a uniform and fought.
The shattered dreams he explores are those of his generation’s vision of an egalitarian society built on social tolerance and economic achievement. From both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, Judah uses his critical eye and signature black-and-white photography to take us on an empathetic journey to a place where people glorify their past, curse their present, and have difficulty imagining a future.

Hayward Gallery
Southbank Centre

Alexander Rodchenko: Revolution In Photography - until 27th April
Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) was one of the great figures of early 20th-century avant-garde art, and also one of its most versatile practitioners. After gaining an international reputation as a painter, sculptor and graphic artist, Rodchenko turned to photography in the early 1920s, convinced that it would become the artistic medium of his era.
Featuring approximately 120 original prints and photomontages, this exhibition traces the development of Rodchenko’s photography over a period of two decades when he created many classic works of Russian and world photography. Pioneering a new vocabulary of bold and unusual camera positions, severe foreshortenings of perspective, and close-up views of surprising details, Rodchenko’s photography balanced formal concerns with an interest in the social and political life of the Soviet Union. Whether making individual portraits, studies of modern architecture and industry, or pictures of mass demonstrations and entertainments, Rodchenko infused his images with a startlingly dynamic point of view that influenced the growth of an experimental aesthetic in European photography of the late 1920s and 1930s.

The Photographers’ Gallery
5 & 8 Great Newport Street, WC2

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2008 - until 6th April
The Photography Prize worth £30,000 is awarded annually to an international photographer who is judged to have made the greatest contribution to photography over the previous year. This year’s finalists are John Davies (UK), Jacob Holdt (Denmark), Esko Männikkö (Finland) and Fazal Sheikh (USA). Founded in 1996, the Photography Prize has become one of the most prestigious international arts awards. Esko Männikkö has been awarded the prize this year.
John Davies has been nominated for The British Landscape at the National Media Museum, Bradford, UK. His panoramic black & white photographs, taken between 1979 – 2005, document the changing post-industrial British landscape.
Jacob Holdt has been nominated for his publication Jacob Holdt, United States 1970 – 1975, published by Steidl GwinZegal, Germany. In the early 1970s, Holdt spent five years hitchhiking across the US, living with and documenting the lives of the people he met - from the poorest Southern sharecroppers to some of America’s wealthiest families.
Esko Männikkö has been nominated for his retrospective Cocktails 1990 - 2007 at Millesgarden, Stockholm, Sweden. A portraitist of isolation, Männikkö documents with great humour, warmth and integrity the lives of those who inhabit the periphery.
Fazal Sheikh has been nominated for his publication Ladli, published by Steidl, Germany. Sheikh is an artist-activist who uses photography to create sustained portraits of different communities around the world.

White Cube Mason’s Yard
25-26 Mason’s Yard, SW1

Gregory Crewdson - from 23rd April

White Cube Hoxton Square
48 Hoxton Square, N1

You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hide The Soil - from 4rd April

National Portrait Gallery
St. Martin’s Place, WC2

Vanity Fair Portraits - until 26th May
Throughout its history Vanity Fair has helped define the public persona of some of the most influential individuals from the worlds of music, sport, fashion, business, literature politics, theatre, cinema, and the arts. Vanity Fair Portraits brings together portraits of cultural icons from the magazine’s vintage and modern periods with sitters ranging from Claude Monet, Amelia Earhart and Jesse Owens to David Hockney, Arthur Miller and Madonna, displayed with legendary Hollywood actors from Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo to Demi Moore and Tom Cruise.
This is a unique opportunity to see 95 years of iconic imagery by some of the most renowned photographers of the twentieth century, including Baron De Meyer, Edward Steichen, Man Ray and Cecil Beaton, as well as portraits by celebrated contemporary photographers such as Annie Leibovitz, Mario Testino, Helmut Newton and Herb Ritts.

Shutting Up Shop - until 4th May
In 1972, photographer John Londei started taking pictures of small independent shops the length and breadth of Britain. Often family-run businesses, well-established in their local communities, Londei strove to capture the timeworn presence of these already anachronistic businesses ­ the butchers and bakers, button makers, cobblers, fishmongers and chemists of our high streets. Over a fifteen-year period, he photographed 60 shops. In 2004, when he retraced his steps and revisited the shops he’d photographed, he found that only seven of the 60 were still in business. His subsequent book of the series, Shutting Up Shop is a fitting tribute to Britain’s independent retailers.

Born 1947: Camera Press at 60 - until 20th April
The UK’s largest independent photographic agency celebrates sixty years with the unveiling of newly commissioned portraits by leading photographers of famous personalities all born in 1947 ­ including Sir Salman Rushdie by Bryan Adams; Ronnie Wood by Sean Cook; and Tessa Jowell by Lord Snowdon.
This display marks the sixtieth anniversary of independent photographic agency, Camera Press, founded by Tom Blau in 1947. In addition to presenting to the public for the first time a group of newly commissioned portraits of notable Britons celebrating sixty this year, Born 1947 ­ Camera Press at 60 also includes a selection of photographs by Tom Blau of subjects from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

Atlas Gallery
49 Dorset Street, W1

George Rodger: African Portraits - until 3th May
A founding member of Magnum Photos, in 1947, George Rodger made his name during the Blitz in London; and through his work documenting Monty’s Desert Rats’ struggle against the Axis armies in Africa, for Life magazine, in 1941. His enduring passion remained Africa, where he returned in 1947, embarking on a two-year long, overland journey from Cape Town to Cairo, with the intention of photographing the wild-life, and, also, wanting to explore something of Man’s inseparable relationship with nature. He visited Nigeria, Uganda, and Lamberene in Gabon, photographing, from the high hills of Basutoland to the remote Nuba villages of Kordofan in Southern Sudan, the little known, day-to-day existence of the tribal peoples in this part of South and East Africa. Rodger gained unprecedented access to the Nuba tribe and the Masai warriors in Kenya; first publishing his extraordinary pictures in National Geographic in 1951. Africa remained a major preoccupation for Rodger for the rest of his life. He died in 1995.

AOP Gallery
81 Leonard Street, EC2

AOP Photographers Awards 2008 - until 24th April
The work of 82 international photographers will be showcased and the coverted Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards will be announced, along with the inaugural winner of the AOP Photographer of the Year Award, in association with Epson. The exhibition will be showcased at the AOP Gallery in three sections:
Part 1 (until 2nd April): Commissioned Portrait, Personal Contemporary Landscape and Cityscape, Commissioned Life, Personal Portrait, Personal Travel.
Part 2 (3 - 14 April): Commissioned Classic Landscape, Personal Classic Landscape, Commissioned Contemporary Landscape and Cityscape, Commissioned Still Life, Personal Still Life, Personal Project.
Part 3 (16 - 24 April): Commissioned Fashion Series, Personal Fashion, Commissioned Documentary, Commissioned Life, Commissioned Interiors and Architecture, Personal Interiors and Architecture.

Michael Hoppen Gallery
3 Jubilee Place, SW3

Alex Prager: The Big Valley - from 25th April
Cinematic and darkly playful, The Big Valley is a series of highly saturated staged portraits by Los Angeles based artist, Alex Prager. For her first solo UK exhibition this entirely new work will be shown alongside photographs from her high-successful Polyester series.
Prager photographs her female subjects in a style reminiscent of the great mid 20th Century film directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk. Amongst the naivety of her compositions and colour palette there is the suggestion of impending narrative. Similar to old style movie stills displayed outside cinemas, Prager’s photographs offer us stories that encourage us to imagine what happens before and after, beyond the edge of the frame. Often shot from an unexpected angle and unusually lit, the audience are positioned as voyeurs. Synthetic wigs, fake birds and retro costumes are meticulously planned and her models cast as players frozen in the narrative. On the surface these models appear polished and eerily near perfection, an artificial perfection racked with tension. Like Guy Bourdin, the king of photographic mise-en-scène, Prager demands more than simply a ‘pretty picture’.

Tod Papageorge: Passing Through Eden - until 12th April
The first UK solo exhibition of work by Tod Papageorge. Taken between 1969 and 1991, these black and white photographs capture the primeval character of Central Park, the human tragedy and comedy in this particular vision of Eden.
During the 1970s, when Papageorge began to work on this series, Central Park was portrayed as a dangerous place not to be visited after dark. These photographs depict a different view showing innocence, beauty, ugliness, isolation, chaos and humour - the whole scope of human life on view within the park. Papageorge parallels this series with the first four books of Genesis, pulling the disparate images together by presenting the park as a public Eden, his elegy to a lost Elysium. This projected narrative lends the photographs structure and gravity: the audience can recognise Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel in various guises acting out their elemental roles in our commonplace world.
Initially, Papageorge’s project was driven less by a fascination with Central Park than by the desire to utilise a particular camera (a 6 x 9 cm Fujica) that was too cumbersome for the city’s streets. He found within the park an intense and palpable realm of bodies, action and objects. Daily photographic excursions alongside Garry Winogrand and Joel Meyerowitz on the streets of New York had honed his abilities to both anticipate and capture great photographic moments within the disorder of the park.

Mirella Ricciardi - until 5th April
Mirella Ricciardi’s African pictures have the integrity of spontaneous, intuitive documents made with the deep love of someone who knew and understood their subject. There is nothing voyeuristic here, no sense of exploitation of the exotic, rather a sense of Mirella’s tender, familial engagement, and her considerable respect for the inherent nobility of what was before her lens.
The small selection of portraits made in 1968 and now on exhibition – printed in platinum in a powerful large format – represents just one facet of a wide-ranging reportage that was published nearly forty years ago as a book, aptly titled Vanishing Africa. The photographer had close connections with Kenya and a privileged access to the peoples of the Turkana and Masai tribes. She recognised the vulnerability of the land, the people and the animals suspended together in a state of grace that was magical, but doomed. Mirella knew she must fulfil her unique opportunity to make a record of this fugitive moment and she did so with energy and passion. By the turn of the millennium her book seemed long forgotten and her pictures were too little known. Four decades on from their making, and with our painful awareness of the obliteration of the way of life that they depict, these images take on an extra layer of poignancy as elegies for a lost Eden and as fine metaphors for all that we are in danger of destroying on our planet.

Photofusion
17a Electric Lane, SW9

In Camera: Jonathan Knowles - until 5th April
Jonathan Knowles is the photographer behind many of the images which have become ubiquitous in British society: the O2 bubbles and the oranges on Sainsbury’s lorries, stores and carrier bags. Recent high profile advertising campaigns have run around the world. In the UK, we have seen advertisements for Plymouth Gin, Nike, Smokefree England, Guinness and Weetabix alongside album sleeves for the Ministry of Sound.
Knowles’ still lives all have a very graphic quality. From the extreme of a white egg on a white background to the sumptuous abundance of his golden scarf, simplicity is at the core of his work. There is nothing that is superfluous to the message in any of his pictures – even crumbs next to a half eaten cake are carefully placed in a ‘random’ way. In each image, the totality is an object which is sculpted by his light, and the way they come together creates a still and permanent beauty.
His liquid work takes this a stage further, this time presenting as permanent what the eye itself can never retain. Whilst unable to control each event in its minutest detail, meticulous planning means that he captures an instant of time never to be repeated; a fraction of a second earlier or later with his shutter and the result would undoubtedly be different.
The images in this exhibition are a combination of Knowles’ serene and sumptuous still lives, together with some images of more explosive moments captured in a way that bring equal tranquility in the absence of the brutal noise that undoubtedly accompanies their creation.

Cristina Sáez: In The Soil Of The Sensible - from 18th until 26th April
Cristina Sáez investigates the ways in which we identify and relate to our environment, with particular attention to the interplay between sensory experience, memory and myth in the perception of the landscape. In this new series of large format colour photographs she re-examines the myth of the forest in the Western imagination in relation to traditional notions of landscape, the picturesque and the sublime. The project is largely inspired by Tim Ingold’s work on the weather and the temporality of the landscape where he states we cannot see unless we are immersed from the start in what Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls ‘the soil of the sensible’: that is, in a ground of being in which self and world are initially commingled.

Victoria & Albert Museum
Cromwell Road, SW7

Curtis Moffat: Experimental Photography and Designs, 1923-1935 - until 13th April
Curtis Moffat created dynamic abstract photographs, innovative colour still lives and some of the most glamorous society portraits of the early 20th century. He was also a pivotal figure in Modernist interior design. Moffat’s archive, containing over 1,000 photographic prints and negatives as well as press cuttings, scrap books and ephemera, was generously donated to the V&A in 2007 by Penelope Smail. The donation is celebrated by featuring some of its highlights in this display. It also acts as a starting point to study Moffat’s pioneering but hitherto little-known work in more depth.

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