The Va has been acquiring photographs since 1856, the year the Museum was founded, and it was one of the first museums to present photography exhibitions. Since then the collection has grown to be one of the largest and most important in the world, comprising around 500,000 images. In 2017 the Vs added the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection to its holdings, which contains around 270,000 photographs, an extensive library and 6,000 cameras and pieces of equipment.
Published to accompany the opening of the state-of-the-art Photography Centre at the Vn in autumn 2018, this beautifully designed box of 50 postcards features some of the highlights of the V, photography collection. Among the selected images are works by British pioneers William Fox Talbot, Roger Fenton and Julia Margaret Cameron, and international artists Alfred Stieglitz, Alvin Langdon Coburn and Gustave Le Gray, alongside examples by contemporary photographers including Martin Parr, Sarah Jones, Sian Bonnell, Nan Goldin and Jan Kempenaers.
