Sean O'Hagan's top 10 photography shows of 2015
1. Alec Soth: Gathered Leaves
Media Space, London
Gathered Leaves was a thoughtful retrospective of work by one of the most astute photographers of contemporary American life and its discontents. Whether evoking the haunted landscapes of the south while on a road trip along the Mississippi, or seeking outsiders who live off the grid, Soth’s photographs are often breathtakingly beautiful, despite the melancholic atmosphere that permeates his work.
At Niagara Falls, site of “spectacular suicides and affordable honeymoons”, as he puts it, he found tenderness amid the drab, functional motel interiors. An overweight couple sit side by side, at ease with his camera and their nudity; two towels folded into the shape of kissing swans sit forlornly on a chintzy bedspread. Excerpts from plaintive notes left by lovers add to the sense of desperation that undercuts the carefully stage-managed romantic myth of the place.
But perhaps the strongest work was his less well-known series Broken Manual. Soth’s portraits of hermits, recluses and survivalists veer between the ominous and the almost holy. One shaven-headed young man stands ankle-deep in a pool of water in what looks like an Elysian glade. The only clues to another, darker narrative are the small swastika tattooed on his arm and the intense but faraway look in his eyes.
Gathered Leaves highlighted Soth’s ability to negotiate documentary and fine art photography like few others of his generation. It was a strong, still show full of beautiful and quietly disturbing images that lingered long afterwards. Read the full review
2. Metamorphosis of Japan After the War
Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool
Barakei (Ordeal by Roses), No.16 (1961) by Eikoh Hosoe
This intriguing group show traced the journey of Japanese photography from the mid-1940s to the mid-60s, from the shock of defeat in the second world war to the nation’s rebirth as a global economic power. Beginning with an image of a blurred sun taken on 15 August 1945 by Hiroshi Hamaya, moments after he heard the news that Japan had surrendered, it also included established photojournalists such as Ken Domon and Tadahiko Hayashi and younger artists such as Shōmei Tōmatsu. The centrepiece was Kikuji Kawada’s The Map, a psychological evocation of the trauma that followed the destruction of Hiroshima. Read the full story
3. Revelations: Experiments in Photography
Media Space, London
Eadweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion Nudes
This show traced the long relationship between science and photography, from some of the earliest photographic images to contemporary conceptualism. It began with pioneers such as William Henry Fox Talbot and Eadweard Muybridge and included the first print of an X-ray and the earliest images of the surface of the moon. Highlights included Harold Edgerton’s almost surreal “impact” photographs (such as the one of a bullet hitting a lemon) from the 1950s. A chance, too, to see Berenice Abbott’s minimalist black-and-white studies of wave patterns and bodies in motion, a counterpoint to the modernist portraits and cityscapes for which she is better known. Read the full story
4. Photo London
Somerset House, London
An image from a series called Vertigo (2014) by Daisuke Yokota
Certainly the photography event of the year in the UK, signalling London’s belated claim as a serious centre of the medium alongside Paris, New York and Los Angeles. The fair itself was the main attraction, with galleries from Britain, Europe, the US and Japan vying for attention and sales. Sebastião Salgado was honoured, as was the much-feted young Japanese photographer Daisuke Yokota. Talks and events, plus the buzzing Offprint photobook fair at Tate Modern, made it a magnet for anyone interested in the current state of photography – which, if this event was any measure, is varied and vibrant. Read the full story
5. Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works
London College of Communication
June Street, Salford (1973) by Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr
Meadows photographs what he calls “ordinary British folk”, and his early work is a sustained snapshot of working-class life in the 70s and 80s. He started out taking vivid colour photographs alongside Martin Parr at Butlin’s Filey in Yorkshire in 1972, then set off on his ambitious series The Bus, in which he rolled up at towns around the UK in a Leyland doubledecker bus, taking portraits in return for a free print. Read the full story
6. Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience 1950s-1990s
V&A, London
An image from Maxine Walker’s Untitled series (1995)
Tracing the lives of black British people in the decades after the first wave of immigration from the West Indies, this show ranged from Raphael Albert’s portraits of beauty pageants in the 70s to the self-questioning conceptualism of Maxine Walker’s series Untitled from 1995, in which she presents photobooth-style versions of herself – with a blonde wig and light skin in one, dreadlocked and “natural” in another – to question ideas of authenticity and racial stereotypes.

7. Germaine Krull: A Photographer’s Journey
Jeu de Paume, Paris
Rue Auber, Paris (circa 1928) by Germaine Krull
Worth the trip to Paris, if only to be staggered that Germaine Krull has never been as elevated as her male contemporaries. Man Ray considered Krull a modernist pioneer, his equal, and her early works show a similar love for experimentation. Her series Metal (1928) still astonishes with its hymn to monumental steel structures including the Eiffel Tower, its angular frame accentuated by her geometric compositions. A political activist and free thinker, Krull also shot some stunning erotic nude studies and self-portraits, and collaborated with the artist Sonia Delaunay. Read the full story
8. Richard Learoyd: Dark Mirror
V&A, London
An image from Richard Learoyd’s Dark Mirror show at the V&A, London
Learoyd uses a room-sized camera obscura to create mesmerising still lives and portraits that hark back to the early history of photography and the evocative paintings of the Dutch master Vilhelm Hammershøi. Learoyd’s big prints are both both ultra-real and otherworldly. They inspired silent reverence and prolonged concentration among visitors, many of whom seemed to be fascinated as much by his technique as by the serene result. Learoyd has said: “When an image works, it often feels that an impression of the person has been left on the paper. You can almost feel their breath.” Indeed. Read the full story
9. Burden of Proof: The Construction of Visual Evidence
Photographers’ Gallery, London
A Drone Strike in Miranshah (2012) by Forensic Architecture in collaboration with SITU Research
A forensic look at how photography has been used as evidence, whether in war crime tribunals or the investigation of state violence. You had to steel yourself to view the show’s graphic and often disturbing subject matter, but there were also some oddly beautiful moments, not least Rudolphe A Reiss’s stark still lifes of murder weapons and isolated pieces of evidence. Read the full story
10. Julia Margaret Cameron
V&A, London
May Day by Julia Margaret Cameron (1866). Photograph: Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The 19th-century pioneer, innovator and iconoclast is celebrated in this life-spanning survey, which includes her portraits of the famous – Dickens, Tennyson, GF Watts – and her friends, acquaintances and servants, who she often posed as biblical characters. Cameron’s iconoclasm is evident throughout: intentionally blurred portraits that add to the mystery of the subject; the smudges and scratches that are physical evidence of struggles with a heavy wooden camera and the painstaking printing method that involved coating large glass negatives with photosensitive chemicals. The results were hauntingly beautiful. Read the full story