Anxiety about the future of the two great photographic libraries housed in the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, can be traced back at least thirty years. In October 1992 we published an Editorial, ‘The Witt and Conway libraries under threat’, which was prompted by a demand from the University of London that the Courtauld – not yet a self-governing and self-financing entity – produce a business plan that would show how the libraries could develop commercial opportunities to offset a threatened reduction in university funding. The financial axe did not finally fall until 2009, when the Courtauld made the staff of both the Witt and the Conway redundant.

Although Mey Rahola (1897–1959) was one of the first women to become renowned for art photography in Spain, she remains a little-known figure today. Two linked exhibitions with a single catalogue dedicated to the Catalan photographer set out to rectify this and liberate an overlooked artist from the shadow of anonymity. Working with Rahola’s family, the curators, Lluís Bertran Xirau, Roser Martínez Garcia and Roser Cambray, have assembled 550 items from her collection, including 250 negatives and a number of photograph albums.

The largest gathering in history of Vermeer’s paintings presents an artist of surprising diversity who worked in isolation.