Moon landings and Martin Parr’s Britain – the year ahead in photography

An exhibition of some 200 of Luigi Ghirri’s photographs, curated by James Lingwood of Artangel, comes to the Jeu de Paume this February (12 February–2 June). The Italian photographer, who was an early adopter of colour, trained as a surveyor and an interest in maps and models runs throughout his many series of work. Ghirri thought hard about the photographic image and what it could represent – as well as the new realities it could create. On seeing the first photograph of the Earth taken from space in 1968, he wrote ‘It was not only the image of the entire world, but the image that contained all other images of the world.’

The famous ‘Earthrise’ photograph was taken by William Anders on the Apollo 8 mission that orbited the moon. To mark the 50th anniversary of the moon landing itself both the National Gallery of Art in Washington (28 April–14 October) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2 July–22 September) will be putting on displays of lunar photography, showing 19th-century attempts to capture the visible surface of the moon, as well as the photographs taken on the Apollo 11 mission.

Bringing us back to Earth with a crash is Martin Parr at the National Portrait Gallery in London (7 Mar–27 May 2019). The timing of this large-scale survey, which includes several decades of Parr’s sustained and merciless scrutiny of Britain and Britishness, couldn’t be more perfect.