I’ve loved looking at photographs for as long as I can remember.  Glancing along my bookshelves I find collections of pictures by many of the great photographers, mostly exhibition catalogs and monographs that I started to buy while I was still in my teens and have been buying ever since.  The artists represented – Don McCullin, Fay Godwin, Henri Cartier- Bresson, Bill Brandt,  Dorothea Lange, Horst, and Gordon Parks, among many others – are those I find I go back to time and time again, often just to look at a single image.

The Radical Eye is an exhibition at Tate Modern of modernist photography from the collection of Elton John.  The period covered in the show is roughly 1920 to 1950, the time in which photography came into its own as a medium and, arguably, one of the most exciting in its short history as an art form.  The show’s selection of beautiful pictures is extraordinary and features not only celebrated artists such as Man Ray, Stieglitz, Weston, Arbus, and Lange, but also lesser-known figures such as Josef Breitenbach and Herbert Bayer.

I found this show fascinating at so many levels.  It captured the conoisseurship, excitement and impulses of a single collector.  It revealed how a single print (in this case mostly vintage, but occasionally modern) can alter your perception of an image that you thought you knew well.  Best of all, it showed me a handful of stunning photographs I’d never seen before, such as Steichen’s portrait of Gloria Swanson from 1924.  Of course, I bought the catalog, knowing that I’ll be dipping into it for years to come.