One of the pleasures of going to the new Courtauld was the opportunity to see the small exhibition/display of photography by Anthony Kersting, described as ‘the leading architectural photographer of his generation’, although I always thought of him as a double act with Edwin Smith – Kersting for good, straight photography and Smith for atmosphere. He was quite well-to-do and started working in a bank, but switched to photography after taking photographs of Peter Jones while it was under construction. The exhibition shows the photographs he took in Kurdistan after serving in Egypt during the war. Apparently, he always used a plate camera. Many of the photographs for the early Pevsners were supplied by Kersting. Now all his negatives are being digitised, so we will probably see more of them – good and accurate records of buildings as they were in the 1950s.
A very evocative small exhibition. The photographs of Yazidis are particularly poignant given their persecution by Islamic State.