Every picture tells a story
Earlier this week I paid a call upon to one of the West End's most of the people museums, but it's one whose merits often go overlooked by visitors to London. The General Portrait Passage on St Martin's Courtyard at the bottom of Charing Gibbet Road, fronting the similarly overlooked image of Edith Cavell and closely behind the more famous and venerable National Corridor. Perhaps it's fortunate that the NPG is a diminutive off the tourist radar, because its pact galleries could easily be overwhelmed if big numbers swarmed through its moving round doors. I usually pay a visit to the galleries every week, specially if I'm in nearby Leicester Quadrilateral and equiangular to see a film at the Potentate Charles.
Every year I create a point of visiting the NPG for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Likeness prize show, which showcases memorable examples of portraiture photography, principally from European and Boreal American artists. The awards ruined out to the panel's chosen few portraits are often pleasing but irrelevant to the gratification of the material, because in most cases the standards are heaven-kissing (6000 entries are whittled down to an manifestation of 60) and everything is excellence taking a closer direct the eye. It has the service of being accessible in multiple senses of the vocable: the gallery is rectilinear in the centre of the Occident End, the works chosen as the world goes avoid the conquer excesses of presuming flummery, and the access fee is only £2.
First prize in the 2011 awards went to David Chancellor's extraordinary image of a 14-year-old miss riding a pad with a dead buck slung over the put a saddle on,...
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