Green Doors '14

Tonight, a dozen of us have been discussing another weekend of open houses and gardens next year, to promote energy efficiency and conservation generally. This will be Cheltenham's third, and is fixed for 20th/21st September. What we need are more people to come forward, to allow their improvements etc. to go on show.

I took the photograph at the exquisite Young Dürer exhibition in Somerset House: I visited it yesterday afternoon. It features the 23-year-old Dürer's wife, "My Agnes" as he called her, a drawing on loan from the Albertina.

Photography

This morning, I visited the newly-reopened Photographers' Gallery, and very welcoming I found it. The makeover provides a much airier setting for the displays, in what is a fairly cramped setting for an important gallery.

I much enjoyed the exhibition of contemporary Japanese photobooks - lots of good ideas there. And even more so, the work of the candidates for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, the winner to be announced in a month's time. I favour Pieter Hugo for this: his bleak reportage of life on the industrial wasteland outside Accra succeeds for me on every level.

From Ramillies Street I biked towards the National Portrait Gallery, but might as well have walked: it took me half an hour to find a vacant slot into which I could return the bike - I suppose people use them to commute to work.

Walking eventually down past the Garrick Theatre, my eyes were drawn to a pair of walking advertisements for "Chicago": red-stockinged legs, double yellows and chewing gum residue notating a form of pavement plainsong - or perhaps I spent too long looking at those Japanese photobooks.

To correct the balance, I ended up my time in London visiting Somerset House - not for the drawings on show at Courtauld Gallery as intended, but the Salgado exhibition at King's College, on the East side. I have long been a fan of the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. The extensive Arden Collection, on display in the Inigo Rooms, displays much of Salgado's earlier work, including the gut-wrenching Brazilian mining series.

London Fashion Week

We happened upon this today, making for Somerset House on a different mission - to see the Mondrians and Nicholsons ("In parallel") at the Courtauld Gallery. Chambers' elegant 18th Century courtyard was stuffed with marquees and thronged with people less than half my age either wearing outlandish clothes or carrying expensive cameras - often both. For once, I felt entirely unselfconscious, taking photographs of people myself. Caroline enjoyed it too, as indeed our Japanese student lodger would have, had she been with us.

What a contrast between the Courtauld exhibition's cool, controlled, abstract paintings, and so many outrageously costumed models - many thin enough to slip down the cracks between the paving stones!

The Courtauld Cézannes

Caroline's friend and former colleague at the Courtauld Institute, Bob Ratcliffe worshipped Paul Cézanne, and was one of the acknowledged experts on his work. Caroline, who worked in the slide library, accompanied Bob on trips to record and photograph exhibitions, Bob with a thermos bag for keeping his film at exactly the right temperature, so as not to jeopardise accurate colour reproduction.

The Courtauld Institute's entire collection of Cézanne's work - unique, at least in Britain - is currently on show at Somerset House (till 5th October). For the catalogue, John House, one of Bob's students, has written an eloquent appreciation, dedicating the exhibition to Bob's memory: he died last year. We have been in London for a couple of days and it was fitting that our first stop on arrival should be Somerset House.

Quite apart from the magnificent Cézannes, I always like visiting the Strand, since having worked near there when I was a newly-qualified solicitor; and it is a particular pleasure nowadays to be able to see both outside and inside Somerset House, with its elegant rooms (see the Degas sculpture gallery - below) and amazing staircase (above).