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Snap Happy! How Children Became Photographers

The Photographers' GallerySoho

Snap Happy! How Children Became Photographers

Now showing14 October 2026 – 21 February 2027£12

Through photographs and archives, celebrates the creativity and curiosity of children as photographers.

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One of the cameras this show covers has a Wellington boot for a body. Terry Dennett, a photographer and activist, built the Wellieflex pinhole camera and wrote up his homemade cameras and children's workshops in Camerawork in 1976, reporting that they "worked". It is the one welly where the hole is the point.

The show traces how photography went from an elite hobby to a child's one, mostly in the post-war years. You get previously unseen pictures by children, of family, friends, pets and the outdoors, beside the adverts, manuals, comics and toys that sold them the habit. It is the gallery's first show of work by young people. The New York Times read it as a case for keeping your child's blurry selfies.

Tickets are £14 at the door or £12 online, including an optional £2 donation. 18s and under go free, and one ticket covers every show that day. It's open until 20:00 on Thursdays and Fridays, and free after 17:00 on the first Friday of each month.

Look for

  • The Wellieflex

    Look for Terry Dennett's pinhole camera with a Wellington boot for its body, one of the homemade cameras the show covers.

  • Allan Dodds's teachers

    Pictures a Scottish schoolboy took of his teachers in secret, with his father's folding camera smuggled into class.

  • Robert Cooper's experiments

    A 1960s English boy's selfies, double exposures and abstract long exposures, including his Self-portrait with Agifold, beside defiant pictures of his preteen friends.

Good for

  • Evening Visits
  • Locals Who've Seen It All
  • Nerding Out

With kids

18s and under go free. There's no cloakroom, so rucksacks have to be worn on your front or side in the galleries.

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