h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The week just gone, I went to the Hayward Gallery in London to visit these two exhibitions, by two very different American photographers. The Ansel Adams exhibition commemorates his 100th birthday (if he were still alive), and looks specifically at his landscape photography, with the emphasis on the earlier work, including some less powerful, but nonetheless interesting, images from his formative years. The original prints are beautiful, many of them suprisingly small, being contact prints from sheet film negatives. Of particular interest were a couple of side-by-side comparisons of earlier and later prints from the same negative. The general opinion is that his earlier prints were better, the later ones sometimes being a bit 'loud', but I felt with the examples shown that the ideal print would be somewhere between the two.
William Eggleston's photography is a very different cup of tea. While Ansel Adams photographed the glories of nature on monochrome, William Eggleston photographs the ordinary suburban world in colour, mainly concentrating on the Southern USA, where he lives. His work can be confusing ('why did he take that?') and unsettling, often carrying the feeling that the images are brief glimpses into a longer story. I had only seen a small number of his pictures before, and was unsure what I thought of them, but seeing them en-masse created a very powerful impression.
If you're at all interested in the visual arts, and are able to get to London, I recommend you take the chance to visit these exhibitions. Together, they form what has to be one of the most important photographic events of the year.