The first major exhibition to treat pictorialism as a global movement brings some 200 rare prints by more than 80 photographers, from Seoul to Cape Town, to Tate Modern.
Tate Modern on Bankside opened Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography on Wednesday 14 October 2026, and it runs to Sunday 21 February 2027. It is the first major exhibition to treat pictorialism as a movement that spanned the world.
Pictorialism began in the 1880s, when photographers set out to prove that a camera could make art rather than records. They worked their prints by hand and treated each one as a unique object.
The story has long been told through Europe and North America. Curated by Charmaine Toh and Genevieve Barton, this account runs on to the 1960s. It gathers some 200 rare vintage prints by more than 80 artists, from Seoul to Sydney and Cape Town.
Adolph de Meyer and Clarence H. White hang beside Long Chin-San, and the Indian-born Shapoor N. Bhedwar. A section on camera clubs traces the movement’s networks, from the Royal Photographic Society in London to Guangshe in Shanghai.
The show fills the Eyal Ofer Galleries in the Natalie Bell Building, with a working darkroom. It closes on pictorialism’s meeting with modernism, through Lionel Wendt’s solarised portraits of the 1930s and the work of Edward Steichen, Paul Strand and Edward Weston.