As is usual for a photography show at the Barbican art gallery you make sure you arrive having eaten well or else pack sandwiches and a flask of tea. The 'European Photographers in the 20th Century' exhibit requires you do both. Several hundred images from twenty-two photographers distributed over two floors is the cultural equivalent of a feast in its own right.

As the ambivalence in Britain towards photography has resolved itself over the last two decades its subtle authority and ability to transcend specifics is clearly acknowledged here. For a Saturday evening late in the run the fact that there were a few hundred visitiors in attendence is impressive. This show has been well curated and well promoted. The social concern and humanism expressed in the choice of work are two areas where photography has long traditions and it could well be argued that presently documentary photography is where it's at in terms of socially informed progressive image making. Its roots are first teased here from Atget's back catalogue with century old images of impoverisment in the 'Zone', an area of Paris home to the dispossessed. Intriguingly, this was an area revisted later in the exhibition by Doisneau 30 years later for the same reasons. Different generations find endless proofs in Atget's work and for that reason he will always be relevant, if never quite portrayed in the round.

The best photographs here are personal and specific yet loaded with the possibility that somehow they can convey universal truths. The effect is to make this show seem a return to a more innocent time where the intent was less academic but more heartfelt.

The curators, Kate Bush and Mark Sladen, could have constructed a similar show to this using entirely different photographers but they have undoubtedly put in the necessary slog in their preparation. This is a well balanced show, although, incidentally, all the photographers here are either North or East European based, Southern Europe has been overlooked entirely. At times, too there does seem to be more than a hint of affirming a European answer to every development in American photography, which is curious. Provocatively there are also warm embraces for surrealism and a wry acceptance of male libidiousness, reminders of both are prevalent throughout.

Importantly, lesser known photographers are successfully shoe-horned in amongst those of unquestioned international and historic repute - whose lesser know images are also given a welcome airing. The practice of displaying modern prints wherever possible is used highly effectively, making sure the work is seen as it was originally intended and not in the form of tired out antiquated prints more suited for archiving than public display.

The Barbican have structured the show around a historic spine and there is no escaping the fact that the clandestine photographs by Henryk Ross taken in the Lodz ghetto are the most historically involving. The nightmare of Nazi oppression is told in the most unexpected way, intertwining the horror with moments of unexpected sweetness. The sense of hellishness is inescapable, though and as the end of the war approached Ross had to store his negatives underground in an attempt to 'leave a record of our martyrdom'. Consequently the film emulsion deteriorated in places causing subsequent prints to ebb away into blackness, blistered with an unearthly burnt effect. It was hard to not feel suitably overwhelmed and disturbed by this work.

Interestingly, the other highlights were also intimate bodies of work but more personal. Inta Ruka's sedate portraits of Latvian peasants are no more sophisticated than any purposeful second year photography degree student might be capable of but her brief understated notes which accompany each image exponentially increase their impact. They form a tender and moving record of a disappearing culture. Oddly the same use of providing a little context to maximum effect was employed for the compulsive portrait series by Seiichi Furuya. His sequence of snapshots of wife Christine Furuya-Gossler a testament to their loving relationship throughout her struggle with mental illness. In the final picture she faces the camera, head shorn and face wet with tears in unbearable anquish, her suicide imminent. It makes for a challenging finish to a deeply sensitive exhibition.

The In the Face of History 'European Photographers in the 20th Century' exhibition 13 Oct 06 - 28 Jan 07

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