Cairo to Constantinople – The Queen’s Gallery, London

This is the first exhibition at Buckingham Palace that I’ve been to in five years in London.  I think part of that reason may be that they don’t tend to get as much press as other exhibition spaces.  This in turn is linked to the fact that the nature of the gallery lends itself to ‘nice’ exhibitions, but certainly not edgy ones.  I can’t see the queen owning enough works by the Chapman brothers to put on an exhibition, for example. In fact, an exhibition of photograph of the Middle East, which doesn’t shy away from images of the aftermath of local conflicts, and reflects from time to time on the changing interactions with, and challenges of, this part of the world, is probably as daring as it gets.

The exhibition is one of images taken by the first photographer to accompany a royal trip, that of Edward, Prince of Wales, known as Bertie, to the Middle East in 1862.  Francis Bedford had already completed royal commissions before the big trip, Prince Albert having been a fan of the modern medium.  He took with him a portable darkroom, and returned with a group of images which were an immediate success when exhibited back in London, with two full sets entering the royal collection.  It is these original images which we see here on display, along with some of the objects also collected by Bertie on his travels, the layered history of a hundred and fifty year old photograph of a two thousand year old object on display nearby being quite a pleasing thing to contemplate.

The exhibition itself is very well put together.  The sumptuous colours on the walls and the lattice-work dividers between sections are somewhat orientalising, but in a way that harmonises with the works on display and brings more visual interest to what otherwise amounts to a few rooms of black and white photographs.  There is sufficient information in the text panels to contextualise what are now largely forgotten episodes of history for a modern audience, and also to highlight the privileges afforded by a royal patron in terms of being able to photograph sights which were normally off limits.  Another touch which I liked was the clear use of symbols to differentiate each region visited by Bertie and Bedford, so that I could tell at a glance whether I was approaching images of Egypt or of Turkey or of somewhere else entirely.

What is missing from the exhibition perhaps isn’t surprising.  While the more salacious details of why exactly Bertie was bundled off with an all-male travel party might make for good reading, the Queen’s Gallery probably isn’t the likeliest venue for spreading those stories still further.  And while the current turmoil in some of the parts of the world depicted is alluded to, a more independent gallery might have gone further in drawing out themes or lessons to apply to what we see now in the newspaper.  Or then again maybe not: this is after all an exhibition which aimed to educate viewers on the work Francis Bedford and the 1862 Middle Eastern tour undertaken by the Prince of Wales, and anything else the curators have achieved in addition to these aims should maybe just be seen as a bonus and left at that.