Focus on Britain
An extraordinary collection of national photography goes on public display
James Hyman stands in the basement of a deserted three-floor shop on Jermyn Street, the hallowed menswear shopping destination in St James’s, and fishes through a bin bag. Around him is the detritus left by the former occupants, a high-end Italian tailor. Clothes rails, hangers, a sad chair. The building doesn’t look like a landmark centre for British photography just yet, but that is very much Hyman’s plan.
“I was trying, last night, to work out where the pictures should go,” he explains, riffling in the bin bag and producing photocopies of some black-and-white photographs that had, until recently, been stuck to the walls. They are reproductions of work by Colin Jones, the ballet dancer-turned-photographer, and celebrated documenter of postwar Britain. Overnight, it seems, someone has binned them.
“Were there lots of things stuck on the walls when you came here?” he asks a builder, not unkindly. “You haven’t taken them off?” “No, someone else must have done,” says the man with the broom.
As a metaphor for what Hyman is trying to achieve, it’s not a bad one. Together with his wife Claire, the British gallerist oversees the Hyman Foundation and the Hyman Collection, a body of over 3,000 significant works by more than 100 photographers including Bill Brandt, Bert Hardy and Jo Spence.
The couple began collecting photography 20 years ago. Unusually for private collectors, they made the works public. The Hyman Collection has been online since 2017. Now, they’re preparing to take the next step — a big one. The Centre For British Photography, which was on track to open in late January when Esquire visited, is an 8,000 sq ft space billed as “a new home for British photography”. The centre will be free to visit and will offer exhibitions, events and talks, a print shop, an archive and a library.
“Basically, photography doesn’t feel as appreciated as it should be,” Hyman says. “And this is our way of trying to say, ‘Look how great these photographers are, look how great British photography is.’”
The centre will feature photographs from 1900 to the present, work by photographers living and working in the UK today and images taken by those who emigrated to the UK.
“We have a particular take on what ‘British photography’ is in terms of British culture, and it may have more resonance post-Brexit,” Hyman says. “We feel countries are enriched by people from everywhere. Our view of Britishness is not looking at people’s passports — it’s about looking
at people who are in Britain, contributing to our culture. It’s not nationalistic flag-waving.”
To that end, opening shows include Women in Photography, an exhibition of self-portraits cocurated by the female-photography advocacy collective Fast Forward; and The English at Home, over 150 photographs focused on domesticity, from the Hyman Collection. Taking its name from Bill Brandt’s 1936 book, it will range from Martin Parr and Richard Billingham to Kurt Hutton and the aforementioned Colin Jones.
The centre will also restage Spitting, shown at James Hyman Gallery in Mayfair in 2015, work by Andrew Bruce and Anna Fox, who were invited to “respond” to puppets from the 1980s satirical TV series Spitting Image, including Margaret Thatcher and the big dogs of her cabinet, Michael Heseltine, Leon Brittan and Norman Tebbit.
The life-size puppets in pinstripes, also in the Hyman Collection, will be on display in the Jermyn Street windows — just along from menswear institutions including Turnbull & Asser, John Lobb and Budd, the shirtmakers.
“We thought it was a good way of bridging the tradition of the street we’re in with the content inside,” Hyman says. “It will intrigue people.”
As well as being a leading art historian and art dealer, James Hyman has a PhD in art history and spent 10 years at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Asked why he feels photography remains overlooked, his answer is robust.
“In all those years, photography was almost absent from the syllabus. It’s an oddity of this country. With [19th-century scientist, Henry] Fox Talbot we basically invented photography, and people still seem to think ‘It’s not really art’, or ‘I could have done that’. But whenever museums or galleries put on photography shows, they are very, very popular. A huge audience has been demonstrated. Where there’s been a lag is from institutions collecting it and curating it.”
○ britishphotography.org