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This past February, while on patrol in Afghanistan with the 75th Cavalry of the American army, Giles Duley (pictured), a British photographer, stepped on a bomb and instantly lost three of his limbs. After nearly 20 operations and nine months of intensive rehabilitation, Duley is getting ready to go back to work. A retrospective show, "Becoming the Story" at the KK Outlet Gallery in London, marks his comeback. 

Born in London in 1971, Duley began his career as an editorial photographer in the fashion and music industries in Europe and America. Ten years before his trip to Afghanistan, he had a change of heart. Tired of the flimsy, narcissistic world of celebrity culture, he started to concentrate on humanitarian projects, working with charities such as Médecins sans Frontières, the International Organisation for Migration and UNHCR. He funded trips to war-torn regions himself, documenting the people he met and telling their stories through his images. 

The venue has an odd name and an even odder concept. The KK Outlet is a somewhat vague multi-purpose centre that combines a communications agency, a gallery and a bookshop. It is designed for the development of innovative brands and products alongside displays of art, photography and design. The conceit is both grand and vapid. But the plain exhibition space serves to heighten the power of Duley's photographs. Packed tightly into a small space, his works are unframed and untitled, and casually pinned to the walls with simple silver clips. Other than the short captions beneath each photograph, they appear fully exposed.   read more »

A new exhibition about Cecil Beaton's career in America brings his singular sensibility into sharp focus, says John McIntyre ...  read more »

In a long-overdue move, the V&A is expanding its exhibition space for photography into a handsome new gallery dedicated to showing works from its permanent collection. Room 100, on the first floor (above the existing photography space), was originally the gallery where drawing competitions were judged, and as part of the refurbishment, its series of semi-circular paintings in the half-lights below the high ceiling has been restored. The first hang, which will be in place for 18 months, measures out a period from the invention of photography in 1839 to the 1960s, and features some of the collection’s greatest hits—an Anna Atkins cyanotype from the early 1850s, a Gustave Le Gray seascape “The Brig” (1856, above), a Muybridge “Leapfrog” from “Animal Locomotion” (1887), a Stieglitz portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe (1918), a Man Ray of Lee Miller (c.1930) and Harold Edgerton’s milk drop falling into liquid (1957).   read more »

What is remarkable is how fresh so many of these photographs look, though they are more than a century old ...  read more »

A small exhibition in London offers an intimate reminder of Edward Weston's genius ...  read more »

A new show of Wolfgang Tillmans's photographs reveals that the Turner Prize-winner can still startle, writes Helena Douglas ...  read more »

The Museum of Modern Art is finally highlighting the work of female artists. Ariel Ramchandani considers the results ...  read more »

Few know of Timothy O'Sullivan, though he was one of the first photographers to chronicle the American west. Alexander Ewing surveys a show of his work at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC ...  read more »

For 70 years, this picture has been used to tell the same story – of inequality, class division, “toffs and toughs”. As an old Etonian closes in on Downing Street, it is being trotted out again. But what was the story behind it? Ian Jack investigates ...  read more »

A show of photographs at Somerset House in London offers a century's worth of arresting images, writes Helena Douglas ...  read more »