London of the 1950s, as described in outline yesterday, was a place for beatniks and writers.  An erstwhile 1920s, where the spirit of Scott and Zelda gave one last hurrah before the sunny optimism of the 1960s burst through.  London of the 1950s was still black and white.  Mostly it rained.  At least this is what the legend would have us believe.  Room 31 at the National Portrait Gallery has been turned over to one of these characters, the inimitable and never-forgotten Daniel Farson, in the exhibition Famous in the Fifties: Photographs by Daniel Farson.

Farson never really had a single job, and he could only be described in the poymathic manner of his work.  A broadcaster, Farson was widely renowned for being a television personality in the days when it was rare to have a television in your house.  Further, he served as a writer and raconteur; the great wit of Soho.  It's his career as a photographer that is surveyed here, one that began as a staff photographer for the Picture Post.

The man was bohemian, in a time when the word (as we know it today) was unheard of.  His portraits propelled this sense of a dizzyingly independent freewheeling artistic life.  Drinking grain whisky in Soho pubs, then breakfasts in greasy spoons, with Lucien Freud, Brendan Behan, John Deakin, and other artists known just as much for their extra-curricular exploits as they were for their writing and painting.  Farson catches this all through his lens.  A talented photographer, as much as a talented broadcaster and writer, Farson and his work were the unlikely zeitgeist of 1950s London: that spirit of the age that both embodies and sets the boundaries for a movement, a time or a place.

Famous in the Fifties: Photographs by Daniel Farson is at the National Portrait Gallery until 16 September.

There's a revolution occurring in London's commercial art world; a revolution and a repopulation. Fitzrovia is becoming home to the highest concentration of new commercial art galleries. It's happening right on Because's doorstep and we bring you the news as it becomes fit to print.

For the first time since the 1950s, when the roads of North Soho were being tread by writers and artists alike, beatnik Fitzrovia was the stepping stone from the artsy Bloomsbury of the 1940s and the Swinging Sixties in Soho proper. One of the leading lights of this new chapter in London's contemporary art history has been Diemar/Noble, the gallery that is Fitzrovia and proud. Holding an annual open submission exhibition, the Fitzrovia Photography Prize. The concept is simple: Anyone is free to submit a photograph taken within a one-mile catchment zone of Fitzrovia, and the past years have seen some of the most innovative street photography put on display in the city - amateur, professional and semi-professional alike.

This year Diemar/Noble have gone one better, and in collaboration with partners Exemplar, developers of Fitzroy Place, and Aviva Investors, have created Fitzroy Place Open Air Gallery, one of London's largest outdoor exhibition spaces, on Mortimer Street, right in the heart of Fitzrovia. A selection of work is on display from the forty-four artists selected for the Fitzrovia Photography Prize across the 114 metre canvas hoarding the wraps around Fitzroy Place. The organiser say that this exhibition is a celebration of the spirit of the Fitzrovia area. The ambition is simple, the execution is flawless, and the ideal is wonderfully realised.

Fitzroy Place Open Air Gallery is on display on Mortimer Street until 30 May.

There are very few things more exciting in the art world than a new gallery opening.  It's a time of anticipation, a reconsideration of an organisation's remit - and sometimes their entire philosophy - and a time of blockbuster exhibition and stellar architecture.  The kind of architecture that's so beautiful that you almost feel like you're floating.  Better still, these new gallery buildings have great cafés (they know what it takes to pull in the punters).  Tomorrow marks the opening of the newly-refurbished Photographers' Gallery in the heart of Soho with the headline show OIL by Edward Burtynsky.

One of the world's most respected photographers, this exhibition displays three sections from Burtynksy's OIL series: Extraction and Refinement, Transportation and Motor Culture, and The End of Oil.  Traditionally, Burtynsky takes ambitious, large-scale photographs of vast landscapes altered by human interference.  In 1997, he noted how the common ingredient within all of these processes (everything from the subjects of his photographs to the film itself) was oil.  Since then, he has travelled the globe to capture the story of oil.  His photographs are large, intricate, detailed and confrontational.

The Photographers' Gallery is one of the most respected art form specific museums in the world.  Under the adept directorship of Brett Rogers, the museum has modernised in parallel to its medium and is not only critically acclaimed but also immensely popular.  Now that the new building has opened, it can only remain to be seen how far they can push photography in the twenty-first century.  You can be assured that photography exhibition in London is in safe hands.

The exhibition is organised in close collaboration with Huis Marseille Museum for Photography in Amsterdam, Gallery Nicholas Metivier in Toronto and the artist himself.

Edward Burtynsky OIL is at The Photographers' Gallery from 19 May until 01 July.