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Photography exhibition recreates the past

28 April 2017

One of the UK's first major exhibitions of photography, staged at King Edward's School in August 1839, will be virtually recreated at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery this summer.

Thresholds, a virtual reality art project by internationally acclaimed artist Mat Collishaw and photographic historian Pete James, aims to shed light on the important role the city played in the early years of photography.

Headsets will enable visitors to walk around a recreation of ‘The Model Room', an exhibition of manufactures, inventions, models and philosophical instruments, which included 93 photogenic drawings by William Henry Fox Talbot. The VR experience will also recreate the exhibition venue, which was originally the library in the magnificent New Street school designed by Charles Barry.

The exhibition will also include what are thought to be two of the earliest surviving images made in Birmingham, views of New Street made from King Edward's School in around 1842, and previously unseen material from the School's archives.

Thresholds will open in Somerset House, London on Thursday, 18 May 2017 before moving to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery's Waterhall between June and September. It will then tour to the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford and Laycock Abbey, Talbot's former home.