London photography exhibitions: the must sees for Autumn 2022

London is never short of creative goings-on, but the city's photography scene is a burgeoning source of excitement, with dedicated photography festivals, galleries and even a new photography quarter at the heart of London's Soho. Stay up-to-date with our ongoing guide to the best London photography exhibitions.

London photography exhibitions 

‘Flowers / Together pt 2’

Have a Butchers Gallery

Until 17 November

A subject of constant inspiration, flowers are returned to by the photographic duo Metz and Racine for an exhibition and book, ‘Flowers / Together pt 2’. Open briefs were given to a cohort of London’s creatives (including Wallpaper*’s own photography director Holly Hay) to see flowers as an anchor point for the most dynamic inventions. Altogether the show and accompanying publication are a testament to the importance of being able to shrug off the constraints of commercial expectations in the creative process. Instead, Metz and Racine celebrate the invigorating chaos that comes from collaboration.

‘Human Stories: The Satirists’

NOW Gallery

Until13 November 2022

Bringing together six rising talents across photography and film, ‘Human Stories: The Satirists’ explores the intersection of visual humour, and interconnected and diverse identities across gender, race and class. Presented by NOW Gallery, alternative worldviews are played with through flair and wit, discarding outdated dialogues. This evocative creativity is a way to ‘traverse cultural modalities of a post-pandemic world,’ curator Kaia Charles explains. The emerging artists include Bubi Canal, Leonard Suryajaya, Nyugen Smith, Thandiwe Muriu, Thy Tran and Stephen Tayo. 

Jack Davison - Photographic Etchings

Cob Gallery

Until 12 November 2022

Now on show at Cob Gallery, Jack Davison’s ‘Photographic Etchings’ achieves a complex feat. Surreal and sensual compositions are clear and crisp at first look with their dramatic contrast, but as the etchings continue to hold the viewer's gaze they dissolve into a melted chiaroscuro, enveloping us into the second wave of surreality. Tumblr and Flickr’s formative photographic influence is present too, as the platforms on which Davison first explored the medium while photographing the Essex countryside. Combining his interest in the works of Saul Leiter, Shoji Udea, August Sander, and Man Ray, Davison Davison creates his own original strange world that blurs seeing and feeling. 

cobgallery.com

Tyler Mitchell: ‘Chrysalis’

Gagosian, Davies Street

Until 12 November

Idyllic visions of Black beauty, desire, and belonging are lensed by Tyler Mitchell in ‘Chrysalis’, his first London solo show at Gagosian, ahead of the much anticipated ‘The New Black Vanguard’ (to open at the Saatchi Gallery on October 28). Land, water and the sky are woven throughout Mitchell’s utopian visions, as he creates a universe in which the spiritual and the transformative come to the fore. Mitchell explains, ‘Collectively, these moments become figments of an imaginative psychic state of being, one in which radiance, resistance, restraint, comfort, and full human agency exist.’ 

gagosian.com