On Wednesday afternoon I visited a couple of exhibitions in the London Street Photography Festival.  

The first was the set of photographs displayed in St Pancras station - Entente Cordiale - which are an interesting mix of English and French street photography.  These will remain on display until the 31st July.  The image entitled Le Touquet, France 2010, by Nick Turpin, was my personal favourite of this exhbition. 

The second, and the main reason for my journey, was the Vivian Maier: A life uncovered exhibition being displayed at the German Gymnasium, just over the road from St Pancras station.  I'd heard of Vivian Maier a few times this year, firstly I think via petapixel and then again by lomokev at his recent Miniclick talk in Brighton, and wanted to take the opportunity to view some of these images "in the flesh". 

I found this whole exhibition to be tinged with sadness. The first set of negatives were found in 2007, bought by John Maloof from an auction selling off the property from a storage unit when Vivian Maier couldn't pay the fees any longer. She had rolls of undeveloped films in there, so these photographs which are being celebrated are the raw photographs, without her guidance for development, framing etc and in fact without her even seeing quite a lot of them. There are also some 8mm films on display as well, these amount to about 40 minutes, and I sat there mesmerised watching the pictures roll by in front of me. Incredible stuff.

The Vivian Maier exhibition finishes on Sunday 24th July, and I'd recommend heading over if you have the chance.