To Russia with love: photographs of early 20th century London go on display in Moscow

 
Royal occasion: Coronation of George VI, 12th May 1937
Henri Cartier-Bresson
12 February 2014

Photographs of early 20th-century London will go on display in Moscow for the first time.

The images include pearly kings and City stockbrokers dressed in top hat and tails, all captured in stunning black and white by photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The exhibition is the highlight of Moscow’s Photobiennale 2014 and organisers said the images could challenge Muscovites’ perceptions of the modern “brand” of London.

The Another London exhibition at the Multimedia Art Museum documents life in the capital between the 1930s and 1970s.

In pictures: 20th century London

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It includes images from London’s Cold War years when visiting the capital was prohibited for ordinary Russians.

The exhibition, which opens on February 19 , is part of the UK-Russia year of culture organised by the British Council and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It shows London’s upper, middle and working classes documented alongside the city’s beggars and street vendors.

The images are the work of renowned photographers, including Emil Hoppe, Robert Frank and Lutz Dille.

A Cartier-Bresson gelatin print shows a women hoisted on to the shoulders of two men in Trafalgar Square during the Coronation of George VI in 1937.

In another picture, a speaker from Brent’s Pillar of Fire Society address the crowds, while a 1949 image shows a 38 tram bound for Abbey Wood travelling over a foggy Westminster Bridge.

Hoppe’s pre-war image shows a “typical young businessman” in a top hat at the London Stock Exchange in the City in 1937.

Dora Maar’s photograph shows a Pearly King collecting money for Empire Day in 1935.

Wolfgang Suschitzky captured a scene at a Lyons Corner House in Tottenham Court Road in 1934 where a man and woman sit in deep conversation.

The works are on loan to the British Council from the Tate’s collection.

Paul de Quincey, the British Council’s director in Russia, said: “Another London is the highlight project of the Photobiennale 2014 and part of the UK-Russia Year of Culture.

“For Russians, London is a brand.

“It will be exciting to see how they welcome the exhibition, and interesting to discover whether they see the photographs as conveying a view of London that coincides with their own.

“The photographs that will be shown in this exhibition are taken from the 1930s to the 1970s and represent a period of history when the vast majority of Russians were unable to visit London.

“As an historical snapshot of a city and its people, this exhibition promises to be thought-provoking and enlightening.

“Given that these two cities were off-limits for each other’s inhabitants for so many years, this exhibition in particular is a kind of catch up on an important period of London’s history that could not be experienced first-hand.”

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