How Do Galleries Work?
Similarly to many photographers, I dream of having my work displayed in galleries across the world. However, I think that before having your work in a gallery, its incredibly important to know how they work. To try and figure this out, I have decided to look into The Photographers Gallery in Soho, London.
When looking into a gallery, its important to find out its history. In 1971, Sue Davies believed that there wasn’t enough appreciation for photography as it didn’t have any dedicated spaces in the country at the time. This led to her fighting to get the funding and a venue in order to open the very first public gallery for photography in the UK, The Photographers Gallery.
The Gallery remained here until 2012 at which point it moved to where it is now on Ramillies Street. Its new five story home boats three floors of exhibition space, an educational studio floor and finally print sales gallery complete with a bookshop and a cafe. Then, eight years later, the Soho Photography Quarter opened. This was supposed to be an outdoor exhibition space so passers by can see just a small collection of prints inside for free during the day or even night.
In order to keep the lights on and the doors open, The Photographers Gallery has multiple sources of income. It receives funding from The Arts Council England and other, smaller public and private donations. Not only this, but with the sale of their entry tickets, books from their bookshop, sales of print copies and a lot of cafe sales, they manage to keep a steady income. As with most funded organisations, a list of their income and expenditures, as well as donors can be viewed online. Click here to view to that page. To give an example of how the donations work, their biggest donor (Arts Council England) doesn't have a set donation amount but when The Gallery moved to a new building, they donated £3.6 million in order to fund construction and moving costs. That said, The Council requires organisations to meet certain criteria, which can be seen listed below.
must be a registered not-for-profit company
primary purpose of the organisation must be for cultural education
must have record of a cultural activity within the last 12 months
The Gallery doesn't just expect the exhibitions they run to inspire a new generation of creatives though. They also run workshops and courses very regularly. In fact their next upcoming workshop (at the time of writing) is on the 3rd of December 2025 where they will investigate the “quirks, mysteries and possibilities of the photo booth” all of it led by visiting photographer, Rafael Hortala Vallve and creative director and designer, Corinne Quin.
As said, The Photographers Gallery was set up to bring attention to an ignored art form. Today, photography isn’t shunned like it used to be but The Gallery’s mission remains largely unchanged. It is still trying to share photography with more and more people in order to try and inspire them to create art. For the photographers that come to visit, it tries to nurture their skills in order for them to improve on their practice so that one day they create work that belongs in its own exhibition spaces and other renowned galleries.
Websites Used In Research
