Flash at the V&A

On Friday 29th May, I went to Flash, a late-night Friday event held at the V&A. On the last Friday of each month, the V&A musuem host a late-night event, running until around 10pm. This month was the turn of photography. There were a number of events running (all listed on the link), and I was keen to go.

I arrived just before 8pm. I picked up a handy guide, but was a bit disappointed at the lack of signage - and I lost a considerable amount of time wandering around the museum trying to find the next event. Also, while this was billed as a "late night" event, much of the action was already over by the time I arrived. Nevertheless, I set off to find something of interest.

The first "event" I went to was a Camera Obscura. Most photographers should be familiar with these - a simple, darkened room into which an image from outside is projected - usually through a lens. It's like being in a giant pinhole camera. There is a particularly fine example up in Edinburgh. This version at the V&A was a simple upside-down projection of a statue that was 6ft away. The "guide" gave a fairly rubbish account of why a Camera Obscura works - beyond stating that "light travels in straight lines". She then recommended a David Hockney book, giggled a little as she moved the image in and out of focus (though without explaining why or how this happened) and very little else beyond a lot of "umming" and "erring". It certainly wasn't worth waiting for 10 minutes, and my girlfriend (not a photographer) got absolutely nothing out of it. She gives better presentations on pinhole cameras to five-year olds.

I then made my way over to the "Photo Swap Shop". This was a small exhibition of work where photographers contributed an image, entered a lottery and got a random image back. Like most other photographers, I didn't exactly want to give my best work away, so I contributed this:



It's okay - just a photo I took in the Paris catacombs in January. Not first-rate, but not bad either. Some of the photos in the swap shop were very good, but I did wish there was some small degree of vetting involved. Some people were clearly taking the mickey - contributing passport photos from their wallet or other such throwaway pictures, while others had donated expensive A4 prints. It didn't seem very fair. I ended up with a rather knackered 3 year-old 6x4 print of some out-of-focus ferns, and was glad I hadn't donated anything better. I was glad I hadn't got the head-high photo of a milk bottle on someone's doorstep.

My girlfriend and her friend went off in search of getting their portraits taken at 9.30pm - an event which was not due to finish until 9.45pm - only to find that the organisers had already packed up and were waiting for their lift home. By this stage, I had given up on finding more events, and instead just enjoyed watching people look at my photo up on the wall in the swap shop. For some reason it was very popular with Europeans - and one German tourist even took it off the wall and ran off with it at one point (he did bring it back, though). It was a strange feeling to have quite a lot of people looking at my work, and it did give me a lot of satisfaction to see them pointing at it, handling it and talking about it.

On the whole, I can't say that Flash at the V&A was an unmissable event. Quite the opposite. I'm sure if I'd have arrived earlier, I might have found some of the talks a little interesting, but these aside, the other events felt a little underwhelming. I won't make any special effort next year...but if you're in town and passing, you could do worse than to take a look.