A Tale of Two Cities closed on 24 September 2006. For details of our current exhibitions, take a look at our what’s on page.
A Tale of Two Cities presented images of London and New York from the museum’s collection. Rather than a chronological history, it offered a number of visual narratives describing the experience of cities.
A Tale of Two Cities brought together photographic evocations of London and New York from the 1840s to the present day, including works by Fenton, Talbot and Coburn, Steichen and Stieglitz as well as many lesser-known—and anonymous—photographers.
Since its birth, practitioners of photography have turned their cameras on the city, recording the continual flow of construction, destruction, re-building and renovation. Photography has been used to preserve the memory of the city, its ruins and relics, and to illustrate the immediate impact of current events on its architecture and its inhabitants. It has revealed bustling streets and jam-packed roads, surveyed celebrating crowds and tracked solitary wanderers.
Using the museum’s photographic collection, A Tale of Two Cities revealed the life and landscape of London and New York, using some of the varied perspectives and processes which have been chosen to tell each tale: from the skies to the sewers, from pictorialism to reportage, from daguerreotypes to postcards.
