26 Sep-16 Nov. Photos of the quintessentialy bohemian area of London in its post-war heyday. Inspired by the vibrancy, exoticism & the promise of scandal & sexuality. Feat. Jean Straker, David Hurn &

Jean Straker, founded the Visual Arts Club at 12 Soho Square in 1951 ‘for artistes and photographers, amateur and professional, studying the female nude’. He was a prolific photographer, supplying photographs across the world. The club also offered nude photography sessions to its members. Straker’s photographs, stored now in the National Media Museum in Bradford, are remarkable for their lack of artifice, their sexuality and curiosity and for reflecting the sexual predilections of the era. Straker became an influential opponent of censorship after being tried and imprisoned in 1962 under the 1959 Obscene Publications Act.

Magnum photographer David Hurn documented Soho’s strippers, studying the lives of these working women both performing and resting in the dressing rooms of the many peep shows and strip clubs. Hurn’s gaze is a sympathetic yet insightful one, as he depicts their public and private personae.

Photographs from the Daily Herald archive show the reaction of press photographers to Soho. From images of scarred gangsters to the wedding of 50s pop star and teen idol Tommy Steele, Soho was seen as a fascinating nexus of criminality and the explosion of youth culture. Edited by the picture desk prior to publication, these photographs and the damage they incurred act as icons of a beguiling era.