Photo London 2025: The Best Exhibitions to Look Out For

Photo London 2025 opens this week with a dazzling array of photography, bringing together both iconic and emerging photographers from across the world. From the high altitudes of the Peruvian Andes to the gritty streets in downtown Miami, this year’s fair showcases a diverse array of visual narratives. Highlights include Colin Dodgson’s documentation of his journey onboard the Andean Explorer through Peru and the Eastern & Oriental Express through Malaysia, Lee Miller’s surreal and fearless war reportage, and James Barnor’s photographs of everyday portraits that bridge together cultures and histories.

Below, find a selection of must-see highlights from the fair.

Colin Dodgson at Belmond 

In Andean Explorer, As Seen By Colin Dodgson, the acclaimed American photographer and AnOther contributor embarks on journeys aboard Belmond’s luxury trains – the Andean Explorer in Peru and the Eastern & Oriental Express in Malaysia – capturing beautifully framed shots of train tracks, hazy desert landscapes, vibrant markets, and farmers herding sheep beneath a mountain capped by a drifting cloud. Shot at high altitudes from the slowly moving trains, Dodgson later hand-printed the photographs in California. The dreamlike series blends a serene softness with a deep sense of wonder and escape.

Read our feature on the show here. 

Lee Miller Archives

Lee Miller’s early photography was deeply shaped by surrealism. Immersed in the Parisian avant-garde of the 1920s, she worked closely with Man Ray to develop the solarisation technique, before later turning to fashion photography, fine art and war photography. At Photo London 2025, The Lee Miller Archives presents a series from her war photojournalism, with works including haunting images from WWII: smoke rising through a window in St. Malo, and laughing groups of Parisian children celebrating liberation atop a car. Once hidden in her attic and rediscovered by her son, Miller’s legacy is now meticulously preserved and personally represented by the Archives at her home, Farleys House. There will be a major Tate Britain retrospective of her work later this year.

Dora Maar & Stephen Shames at Amar Gallery

Dora Maar, the pioneering French photographer, painter, and poet, is celebrated for her contributions to Surrealism and her complex relationship with Pablo Picasso – though her work far exceeds that association. At this year’s Photo London, Amar Gallery presents Maar’s surreal black-and-white photograms alongside Stephen Shames’ powerful images of the Black Panther Party, including Panthers lined up at the Free Huey Rally, capturing the urgency and discipline of the movement. Maar’s compositions were created without a camera, by exposing natural forms like hands and plants on photographic paper to light. Paired with Shames’ urgent depictions of protest and solidarity, their works explore a stirring call for resistance and change.

London Lives

London Lives brings together an incredible line-up of 30 photographers curated by Francis Hodgson, including some of the most celebrated names in photography: David Bailey, the iconic British photographer who defined 1960s London with his bold fashion and portrait work; James Barnor, the Ghanaian-British pioneer who documented postcolonial diasporic life in the UK from the 1950s onward; and Mary McCartney, whose intimate portraits reflect a deep, personal connection to the city. Together, they explore London through lenses that are at once iconic, abstract, and deeply personal. From stark street life to atmospheric portraiture, the exhibition is a love letter to the capital. Highlights include McCartney’s Casual (1995), where intimacy draws the viewer into the image, and Jamie Hawkesworth’s urban scenes. This is London as lived, documented, and reimagined.

Highlights include the work of street photographer Nick Turpin, who finds abstract beauty in London’s commuters. Shot through bus windows at night, his images blur condensation, reflection, and colour into haunting compositions, capturing the everyday into visually rich, almost theatrical scenes that are part surveillance and part dreamscape. There’s also Kalpesh Lathigra’s portfolio of vast and ranging work, documenting his travels across Mumbai, alongside a classic American road trip and discarded fruit in Afghanistan. His works are lyrical, almost cinematic in their composition and explore the complexities of identity and diaspora. His ongoing project A Liberation Song traces the complex legacies of colonialism in India and the UK, using a moody visual language that merges landscape, portraiture, and archival material. Lathigra’s images are rich with quiet emotion, with cropped images of sun-cast net curtains, smoke-filled streets and solitary figures. Whether addressing British South Asian identity or post-imperial memory, his work is deeply personal and politically resonant.

Martin Parr & James Barnor at Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris

Two icons of social photography meet at Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière. Martin Parr’s wry 1970s Britain – think buffet queues at a mayor’s banquet – is a study in English eccentricity. Parr is famed for his vibrant colour photographs, though his lesser-known body of black-and-white work from the 1970s showcase his sharp wit and keen eye. After moving to London from Ghana in the 1960s, James Barnor turned his lens toward the vibrant and often overlooked lives of Black Britons in the postcolonial era. His intimate portraits and street photography vividly captured the daily experiences, struggles, and triumphs of the British diaspora, showcasing a diverse and multicultural city in flux. Together, the Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière presentation captures communities with humour and historical weight.

Baldwin Lee & Alice Mann at David Hill Gallery, London

At David Hill Gallery, Baldwin Lee’s classic black-and-white portraits of Southern childhood in 1980s America meet Alice Mann’s vibrant and elegantly shot Drummies series of young South African schoolgirls, as they practice their drum majorette routines and march in their bejewelled costumes and tall, furry hats. The series celebrates South African girlhood and pride. Mann’s images beam with strength and discipline, while Lee’s images quietly honour the beauty of everyday Black life. This duo captures generations across continents with tenderness.

Read our feature on Drummies by Alice Mann here. 

Bee Gats at Mortal Machine, New Orleans

Tattooed hands, cigarette-smoking figures, bold neck chains, and pointed guns; images steeped in gang iconography make up the work of Bee Gats. Bringing Miami’s underground to Photo London with raw, unfiltered black-and-white portraits, Gats’ work is deeply personal, capturing the layered realities of growing up Latino in a world defined by violence, loyalty, and survival. His portraits are unflinching, offering a deeply human perspective on the harsh realities of life within this intense subculture.

Gabriel Pinto at Beta Contemporary, Barcelona

Venezuelan photographer Gabriel Pinto honours his African heritage with stunning ethnographic portraits rooted in Barlovento, where generations were shaped by slavery and cocoa plantations. In the portraits, the harvest is reappropriated into accessories, with one photograph of a halved cocoa shell as a portrait sitter’s hat. Pinto’s work celebrates cultural survival through vivid depictions of ritual and craft, and his lens shifts to become a beautifully composed documentation of resistance and pride.

Adam Rouhana

A boy stands among olive trees, forcefully biting into a watermelon, a symbol of Occupied Palestine. This image is one of many that reflect the work of Palestinian-American photographer Adam Rouhana, who explores identity and perception with both poetic and political force. Raised in the US, Rouhana returns to Palestine with a dual perspective. His photographs capture intimate domestic moments, dramatic scenes of young men riding horses at night, and landscapes that speak to the struggles of displacement, the beauty of belonging, and the complexities of documenting one’s own culture.

Photo London is on show at Somerset House in London from 15 - 18 May 2025.