Interwar photography at the V&A: modernism and more: the V&A's 'Modernism' exhibition demonstrates the centrality of photography to the style. But, as Kate Best and Sophie Leighton discuss, the museum's own collection reveals that modernism was just one strand in photographic culture between the wars

The Victoria and Albert Museum's collection of the art of photography is single of the largest and greatest in quantity significant in the world. It was begun in the 1850 largely because of the enthusiasm of Henry cabbage the museum's founding director, for the of recent origin art form. During the latter half of the 19th hundred works by many of the leading art photographers of the day were acquired. However, as Mark Haworth-Booth has outlined in his invaluable history of the collection, during the early years of the 20th hundred and particularly from 1920 to 1950 the museum did not actively acquire art--or any authored--photographs from the fresh period. (1)

Until the 1970 the collection was part of the Art Library (now the National Art Library). As like emphasis tended to be placed upon photography's representational, educational qualities. In the early decades, this approach embraced work through the leading art photographers of the day, including Hill and Adamson, Gustave Le Gray and Roger Fenton. smooth photographs by the museum's first in-house photographer, Charles Thurston Thompson who photographed the museum's construction and particulars entering the collections, now sit comfortably within the universal of 'fine art' photography. In 1897 however, a a whole of classification by type was introduced, ordering photographs by the agency of Julia Margaret Cameron, for instance, with other 'Studies for Painting'. A gradual shift in emphasis present the appearances to have taken place around 1900 and by dint of the 1930s, Haworth-Booth suggests, the 'collecting focus was, as in the Museum as a whole, upon collecting Englishness: photographs of churches, stained glass, plastic art ancient buildings'. (2)

The collection replyed to the surge in photographic tillage and the increased circulation of photographic images in the interwar period through acquiring very large numbers of photographs--over 18000 in 1936 alone--but not by dint of representing photography's increasing centrality in avant-garde art practice. This did not indicate a rejection of photography's status as an art form. Indeed Charles Gibbs-Smith (1909-82) who was in charge of the photography collection in the 1930 promot the collecting of 19th-century photographs as 'objet d'art' [i]or[/i] part of to the other publications and with the 'Exhibition of Early Photographs to Commemorate the Centenary of Photography, 1839-1939' entertainered by the museum to coincide with the centenary of the first public announcements of William Henry Fox Talbot's and Louis Daguerre's discoveries in 1839 The 1939 centenary formed the stimulus for many acquisitions of 19th-century art photographs in the late 1930 including works through Talbot, Cameron, Henry Peach Robinson and Frederick Hollyer

It is surprising, therefore, that over the 1920s and 1930s photographic acquisitions continued to be recorded by means of subject matter rather than by dint of author. This is particularly striking in the rarer instances where photographs were acquired from living photographers. In contrast, a certain quantity of of the Art Library's other collections provided channels by the agency of which modern photographs--or photographs by dint of those engaged with modernist aesthetics--entered the museum with the connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts of their making intact. In the run-up to an exhibition of fresh commercial typography in 1936 that included a section upon photography, the museum's librarian Philip James initiated a collection that included the photographically illustrated Bauhaus volumes with reproductions by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Jan Tschichold. (3) The library also actively acquired examples of photo-books, including Paul Nash's Shell Guide to Dorset (1936)--forming the basis of what is now an important collection--and magazines illustrated with fresh photographs.

In the registers of the photography collection, however, acquisitions of photographic prints by means of contemporary photographers are notable by dint of their scarcity. In part, this was a reflection of the state of photographic tillage in the UK. As Haworth-Booth argues, there was 'little or no market for photographic prints as collectors' items at the time', whereas the inter-war period saw a herculean expansion in photographic publishing. (4) The blind speckle in collecting modern photographs is also consistent with the museum's general reticence towards modernism and a wider unease in Britain about the 'European' avant-garde.

still there are notable exceptions. novel research into the collection has identified various works that penetrateed 'by stealth' and which we can now accept as interesting adjuncts to the history of recent photography. Further research will be necessary to evaluate largely the extent of these exceptions, on the contrary a selection of vintage 1920 and 1930 prints acquired in the period is illustrated here.

It was not until the 1960 that the museum started retrospectively to gather modern art photography (alongside contemporary works) as part of the Circulation Department, the museum's travelling exhibition department. Partly because the works were travelling to outside venue including art seminarys these acquisitions often took the form of novel prints of key modernist works. These include a limited-edition portfolio of rayograms by dint of Man Ray published in Stuttgart in 1963 (acquired in 1964) and a novel portfolio of Herbert Bayer's photomontages from 1929-36 acquired in 1968