The Photographers' Gallery
The Photographers' Gallery, located on Ramillies Street near London's Oxford Circus, is the UK's first public gallery dedicated to photography, founded in 1971 by Sue Davies. Originally opened in a former tea room on Great Newport Street, the five-floor gallery relocated in May 2012 to a redeveloped textiles warehouse designed by architects O'Donnell and Tuomey. It hosts Europe's prestigious £30,000 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize.
London · from the walk “Canvas & Cobblestones” · audio ~3 min · Generated
16-18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW
- Sue Davies opened the UK's first photography gallery at 8 Great Newport Street on January 14, 1971.
- The current venue of The Photographers' Gallery opened in May 2012 after a design by architects O'Donnell and Tuomey.
- The Photographers' Gallery established the annual Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 1996 with a £30,000 award.
- Ramillies Street was named after the Battle of Ramillies fought on May 23, 1706 during the War of the Spanish Succession.
Who founded London's Photographers' Gallery in 1971?
Look up at this building on Ramillies Street. Five floors of photography... tucked away just steps from Oxford Circus. It looks unassuming from the outside. But behind these walls is the birthplace of a revolution in how Britain sees photography.......... Did you know that before this building existed, this whole idea... a gallery Just for photography... started in an abandoned tea room?......... Back in nineteen seventy one, a woman named Sue Davies founded what would become the UK's first public gallery devoted to photography, in a former Lyons Tea Room in London's Covent Garden. She wasn't wealthy. She wasn't a photographer. She'd been working as an exhibitions secretary at the Institute of Contemporary Art. But when the Ica refused to show more photography exhibitions, she made a decision... if museums didn't want photography in their spaces, she would start her own.......... And here's the part that gives me chills. Sue had to remortgage her home and went without a salary for eighteen months. She found a derelict tea room at number eight Great Newport Street, and on the fourteenth of January, nineteen seventy one, she opened the doors. The inaugural exhibition was called The Concerned Photographer, curated by the great Hungarian American photographer Cornell Capa, brother of Robert. Admission was the princely sum of twenty new pence, and it marked one of the Last outings for the old shilling system before Decimal Day.......... The gallery went on to give First UK exhibitions to names like Yurgen Teller, Martin Parr, Sebastião Salgado, and Andreas Gursky! It also created the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in nineteen ninety six, which annually rewards the most significant contribution to photography in Europe. With a thirty thousand pound prize, it's been described as the biggest and most prestigious of its kind on the continent.......... Now, the building you see today? It opened in May twenty twelve after an ambitious two year redevelopment of an old textiles warehouse. It was designed by award winning Irish architects O'Donnell and Tuomey. And even the street name has a story. Ramillies Street is named after the Battle of Ramillies, fought on the twenty third of May, seventeen oh six, during the War of the Spanish Succession. In less than four hours, Marlborough's forces overwhelmed the Franco-Spanish-Bavarian army... and London honoured the victory by naming streets in the surrounding area.......... Sue Davies ran the gallery for twenty years before retiring in nineteen ninety one. She passed away in twenty twenty, just four days after her eighty seventh birthday. But her gamble... that second mortgage, that abandoned tea room... changed British art forever. Every photograph you see inside these walls exists because one woman believed the camera deserved its own cathedral.