If you, as a photographer, are looking for a one-stop shop to learn, workshop, compete, exhibit, buy – whatever – look no further than The Photographers’ Gallery.  According to their website, this is “largest public gallery in London dedicated to photography.”

The Gallery is not only a website, it occupies capacious premises in London near the Oxford Circus tube station.

The Gallery’s interest areas and topics span the gamut.  Consider their lecture The Lens and the Gun which explores “the historical, mechanical and metaphorical relationship between photography and guns.”  So now you’re thinking, “Ah, so this is one of dem high-brow, chi-chi ‘art institute’ thingies.”  Not so fast – would a precious lah-de-dah institute offer a five-week iPhone Photography Course?!  Now ain’t that democratic and down-to-earth? And also up-to-date: this course includes lessons on ” social platforms and sharing forums, both online and offline, where mobile photography is being showcased and discussed.”

That’s what The Photographers’ Gallery is (or tries to be):– All things to all photographers.

Besides the said lecture and course, you can find other events ranging from the tried-and-true to the offbeat.

As of now, it hosts two exhibitions, one of which definitely falls in the ‘offbeat’ category: Shoot! Existential Photography.

Apparently carnivals in the inter-War years used to have an attraction in which you tried to shoot a target with a gun; if you succeeded, a camera would shoot a photo of you and that would be your prize.  (Shades of the Lens-Gun lecture!)  Some photographers – including Man Ray – took inspiration from that fairground novelty to try to draw parallels between shooting with a camera and shooting with a gun.  That’s what this exhibit is about.

The second exhibition is much more prosaic.  It features photographs of the people of Liverpool – many days in the life of a city as reflected in its inhabitants.  The photographer, Tom Wood, has taken a “documentary . . . approach” to his Merseyside subject matter.  If he truly has, then Anfield and its denizens are surely well-sampled in his works.

YNWA.