The best photography exhibitions to visit this spring

On display at the V&A Museum in London until 6 November 2022, the exhibition “Maurice Broomfield: Industrial Sublime” features photographs that capture the stories of factory workers during the industrial revolution and the introduction of new technologies. In particular, Broomfield’s work is framed by the rising of post-war industrial Britain through to its decline in the 1980s. The exhibition features over 40 original prints from Broomfield’s extensive archive at the V&A, displayed alongside a selection of the artist’s cameras and memorabilia. To accompany the exhibition, the V&A will publish a new book on Maurice Broomfield, written by V&A Senior Curator Martin Barnes, with a foreword by Nick Broomfield. 

The exhibition "For the Record: Photography & The Art of the Album Cover", on view from 8 April to 12 June 2022 at The Photographers' Gallery in London, celebrates the album cover as a powerful "art object" that shapes and defines the image and career of artists. Over 200 covers will be on display, from the most iconic and well-known to the most bizarre. Yet the focus is not on those represented, but on the work of photographers and visual artists who played a key role in defining the identity of musicians and record labels.  On display works by Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, David Bailey, David LaChapelle, Ed Ruscha, Elliott Erwitt, Guy Bourdin, Helen Levitt, Irving Penn, Jeff Wall, Joseph Beuys, Juergen Teller, Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Richard Avedon, William Eggleston and others. 

Italian premiere for the impressive exhibition “Sebastiao Salgado: Amazonia”, open until 25 April 2022 at MAXXI in Rome. Over 200 photographs to celebrate the magnificence and shed light on the vulnerability of the ecosystem of the Amazon Rainforest and the importance of the indigenous communities inhabiting it and preserving its life. The exhibition is accompanied by a soundscape composed by Jean-Michel Jarre and inspired by the sounds of the forest.  The project retraces six years Salgado spent in the Amazon Rainforest, in close contact with the communities and nature. 

Produced in collaboration with the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, the exhibition “Henri Cartier Bresson – China 1948-49 / 1958” is on view until 3 July 2022 at the MUDEC in Milan. On display more than 100 original prints, vintage magazine publications, documents and letters. The project retraces two topical moments in the history of China: the fall of the Kuomintang and the subsequent establishment of the communist regime (1948-1949) and Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” (1958). The photographs were taken by Cartier-Bresson during a ten-month stay in the Shanghai area, while he was working at a reportage commissioned by Life magazine. An intimate portrait of China in that period.

On view until 30 May 2022, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC presents“James Van Der Zee’s Photographs: A Portrait of Harlem”, a photographic exhibition that traces life in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s through the pictures by American photographer James Van Der Zee. Harlem, New York's majority Black neighbourhood, was an influential centre of American culture during the Harlem Renaissance. With his camera, Van Der Zee captured celebrations, nightclubs, shops and portraits of religious, social, political and sports groups in the community. The exhibition also features his famous studio portraits.

From March 3 to June 26, 2022 CAMERA – Italian Centre for Photography, in Turin, presents “Masterworks of Modern Photography 1900-1940. The Thomas Walther collection at the Museum of Modern Art, New York”. For the first time in Italy, more than 230 works from the first half of the 20th century that have shaped and changed the history of photography. On show works from the Bauhaus school, with photographs by László Moholy-Nagy and Iwao Yamawaki, from the surrealist movement, with Man Ray, Maurice Tabard, Raoul Ubac, and the constructivism of El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodčenko, Gustav Klutsis. Among the others photographers featured are Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alfred Stiegliz, Berenice Abbott and Marianne Breslauer. A project by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, curated by Sarah Hermanson Meister and Quentin Bajac. 

The exhibition  “Momentum of Light – Iwan Baan and Francis Kéré”, on view until 11 June 2022, is presented by the Architectural Association in London as part of the residency at Heal's. Dutch artist Iwan Baan's photographs were taken during a trip with Burkinabé architect Francis Kéré in March 2020, and explore 'the interaction between natural sunlight, vernacular architecture and everyday life in the West African nation of Burkina Faso'. A testimony to the power of architecture, textures and innovative forms to narrate and influence, here through photography, the way we conceive and design spaces.  

Since 2007, the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum has inaugurated a series of exhibitions dedicated to the origins of photography. “Geneses of Photography in Japan: Hakodate” marks the second episode of the “Geneses of Photography in Japan” series, and is on view until 8 May 2022. The exhibition was conceived under the supervision of Ohtsuka Kazuyoshi and Takahashi Norihide, and consists of three sections presenting early photographs of Hakodate, one of the birthplace of photography in Japan and an important port, and related materials. Hakodate experienced many upheavals over more than half a century from the Bakumatsu, the closing years of the Tokugawa shogunate (c. 1850-1868), through the Meiji period (1868-1912). 

Extended until 28 August 2022, the exhibition “A visual alphabet of industry, work and technology” at the MAST Foundation in Bologna presents the extremely rich heritage of the MAST Foundation. Since the early 2000s, MAST has created a space dedicated to the photography of industry and work that has made it a worldwide reference centre in the sector. The exhibition is conceived as an alphabet articulated on the walls of three exhibition spaces. From the A for “Abandoned” to the W for “Waste”, "Water" and “Wealth”, the project aims at encouraging discussion and exchange, providing not only detailed information on the works on display but also a critical commentary.