Light and Magic: art photography's global story opens in London

Step into the Eyal Ofer Galleries at Tate Modern, and the photographs aim to be as imaginative as paintings. Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography opened there on 14 October 2026 and runs to 21 February 2027. About 200 vintage prints by more than 80 artists fill four themed sections. The museum calls it the first major show to explore Pictorialism (an art photography style that began in the 1880s) as a global movement.

The context

Followers of the style held that photography is more than taking a picture. They saw it as a true art form. The release says the movement turned photography from a record-keeping tool into fine art.

How the prints were made

The photographers tried complex ways of developing and printing. They changed their negatives and used many kinds of paper. One display shows prints from the same negative, so you can compare platinum, bromoil and carbro processes. A working darkroom in the show offers printmaking sessions on certain days.

I arrived thinking a darkroom was simply a room with the lights off.

Artists from many places

Charmaine Toh and Genevieve Barton curated the show. The artists include Adolph de Meyer, Long Chin-san and Luo Bonian. Lionel Wendt and Shigeru Onishi are named too. A Brazilian section features the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, a group based in São Paulo, and work by Roberto Marconato. The guide also shows a 1909 Alvin Langdon Coburn photograph of Regents Canal. It adds a Soichi Sunami collaboration with the dancer Martha Graham.

Lionel Wendt, from Colombo

Lionel Wendt was born in Colombo in 1900 and died there in 1944, Sharjah Art Foundation notes. He trained as a lawyer and a concert pianist in England. Photography became his formal pursuit in the 1930s. His methods included photograms, photomontage, double printing and solarisation. He met solarisation through reproductions of Man Ray's photographs. Wendt also helped found the 43 Group, an artists' circle with a modern Sri Lankan outlook. After his death his work was lost and forgotten for decades. The museum bought an untitled Wendt print from about 1933 to 1938 in 2013, with funds from its South Asia Acquisitions Committee.

Plan a visit

The show is open daily from 10.00 to 18.00, and until 21.00 on Fridays and Saturdays. Visitors aged 16 to 25 pay £5 through Tate Collective. Members enter free, and the audioguide costs £5. Darkroom sessions run on certain days, so check before you go.

Would you visit?