American Photographs

American Photographs is on at the V&A South Kensington until 16 May 2027, in the Photography Centre, Rooms 100 and 101. It's a wide-ranging look at American photography, and the title comes from Walker Evans's 1938 book American Photographs, which captured a country in flux. The exhibition uses that book as a starting point to examine how photography has documented and shaped the United States, drawing on the V&A's collection of American photography — one of the largest outside North America — to show the breadth of the country's photographic traditions and the central role image-making has played in American life.

Rather than a single narrative, the show works through several distinct threads. There's photography of the American South, the work of Laura Aguilar, and the intersection of photography, war and technology. It also looks at the blurring of fiction and reality, and feminist perspectives in American photography. By pulling from different eras and styles, it manages to cover a lot of ground without losing sight of that original Evans starting point.

If you're heading over, you'll find it in the Photography Centre, Rooms 100 and 101, at the V&A South Kensington on Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL. Entry is free and no booking is required, so you can just turn up whenever suits you. With the closing date set for 16 May 2027, there's plenty of time to fit it in.