Charles Jones: Summer exhibition

The Michael Hoppen Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of Charles Jones photographs.

Charles Jones was an English gardener and plantsman, who worked on private estates in the 1890s. As  if they were carefully crafted objects, he diligently photographed the vegetables, fruit and flowers  he grew. In the era  of the supermarket, they appear as a eulogy to a lost time of intimacy between producer and product, the simplicity of the forms paralleling a seemingly less complex age. Although his work wasn't discovered until 1984 (in Bermondsey market by Sean Sexton), his life's work is now considered to be on a par with the spare, modernist photographs of Karl Blossfeldt's flowers and Edward Weston's vegetables. All his negatives would have been glass and each gold toned print would have taken many hours to complete, the prints are beautiful and unique and show an adept hand in what was a very complex 'hobby'. His work is in public institutions worldwide.