Butterfield -- Bermuda National Gallery, Ondaatje Wing -- through October 1996.

When the first daguerreotype photographs were released to an astonished Paris in 1839, they signalled the birth of a new art form in which technology and aesthetic creativity walked hand in hand.

Pre-dating the Impressionists (who were partly inspired by the `here and now' immediacy of the photographic process) by some 20 years, the advent of photography quite literally brought the masses, and the minutia of their daily lives into startling focus, often with candidly documentary pictures which presaged the rise of photojournalism. Some facets of this extraordinary growth are revealed in a new and totally fascinating exhibition at the Bermuda National Gallery. All from the private collection of Masterworks' Tom Butterfield, they cover photography's first century from 1880 onwards. It is not an exaggeration to say that this collection contains images by some of the world's very greatest photographers. Tom Butterfield, who is also the curator, sought out a unifying theme in choosing which of his undoubted treasures should go on show: `Quenching Thirst' was a brilliant choice since the imagery can be so loosely -- and wittily -- interpreted. Indeed, he begins with Max Jourdan's `Watering Can', one of the few colour prints in the show. There are also other variations on the theme with `Water Rats', a 19th century albumen print (discovered by Butterfield in his parents' garage) which won photographer Frank Sutcliffe a prize in a London exhibition. The group of young boys cavorting in and around a rowboat in Whitby Harbour is a marvellous evocation, for us, of a seemingly more innocently halcyon era.

Similar in theme, although the date is 1946 and across the Atlantic ocean, Todd Webb's silver print still echoes the spontaneity of simple pleasures in his street scene of New York kids dancing round a cascading fire hydrant as passers-by gaze with more than a little yearning at the merriment: no wonder Webb (a close friend of Aflred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe) is considered to be one of the last living exponents of `the golden age' of photography.

For the most part, though, the theme celebrates the more obvious ways of quenching thirst. The curator has pointed out that this show evolved out of his own background (a degree in Media Studies, with emphasis on the interpretation of photography, followed by employment at Bristol Cellars) -- hence, perhaps, the inclusion of advertisements, some of which have become classics. The most famous of these is probably the great Andres Kertesz's series of posters revealing sequentially, the now famous catch-phrase, `Dubo, Dobon, Dubbonet'.

Tom Butterfield, quite justifiably, has included a couple of his own photographs in the show: both in colour, both capture a sense of place. The first, of a faded and peeling advertisement for Cotes du Rhone, captures the feel of the French countryside, and the second is an atmospheric study of a deserted restaurant in Nova Scotia, more of a diner, really, with salt and pepper shakers, knives and forks awaiting customers.

`A slice of reality' which is, ultimately, the pervading theme of this show, is brought humorously to life in Robert Doisneau's 1977 study of two middle-aged French ladies lolling outside a liquor shop, as a daschund dog whose failing rear legs are resting on a pair of wheels, waits patiently for their animated conversation to, please, come to an end.

All thoughts of the contrived splendour of `Dejeuner sur l'Herbe' are swept away in the realism of Lee Miller's `Picnic at Mougins 1937', where the former assistant to Man Ray has posed a group of people, the women bare-breasted and nonchalant. Similarly, there is little romance in Cartier Bresson's silver print view of a picninc on the Marne, as his lens is intrigued by a group of hearty peasants, sitting with their backs to the camera amid a clutter of bottles and half-eaten food as they gaze, satiated, at boats moored in the quiet river.

It is, perhaps Henri Cartier Bresson, the most famous of all the photographers represented here, who most endearingly captures the French `joie de vivre' in his brilliant `Rue Mouffetard, Paris 1954', where a little boy swings along the street carrying two large bottles of wine. Wonderful, too, is Willy Ropnis' 1950 study of an al fresco lunch, featuring almost stereotype lusty French peasants where a pretty and sweetly smiling young girl, her bodice bursting at the seams, tops up the glass of an old fellow (her father?) in grimy shirt and high-waisted trousers hitched up by braces. This sense of innocent happiness is wonderfully realised, too, in another 1950 study, this time by Robert Doisneau in his poignant French bar scene, where a glowing young bride offers her groom a glass of wine, the two lost in their own world as a little man to their right chats to a barmaid as she leans over a sink and in turn is watched by a grimy coalminer who has popped in on his way home to quench that certain thirst.

At that same time, just after the second world war, the pursuit of fun took on a more organised approach across the Channel in England. There is a quite hilarious, yet ultimately touching series of photographs by Grace Robertson.

For some reason, this sequence has been split up, but we are able to follow the antics of four, probably Cockney women, dolled up in their shabby best -- the corsages suggest they have come from a wedding -- and waiting (as the French never had to do) for the pub to open; further on, we see them inside, the central woman now well away as, glass of ale held on high, she serenades her chums and, in another study, as they sit and chat, a young girl, forbidden entry, gazes at them through the window.

Her Battersea Women's Pub Outing is in similar vein: no doubt copious glasses of beer have encouraged the sense of abandon as the women in party hats and fags lit (also sporting corsages -- perhaps not confined to weddings, after all), hitch up their dowdy skirts for a `knees up' outside a parked charabanc as a man plays an accordion. As Tom Butterfield has remarked, these French and British studies, besides their often hilarious social nuances, speak to the viewer on a deeper level, a testimony to a time when the pent-up emotions of five harrowing years of war were let loose in the reality of peace.

Although there is no catalogue, the curator has provided plenty of enlightening background comments in the form of exhibition boards, some his own, and some of them pertinent quotes. Perhaps the one which most eloquently captures the spirit of this show is by the French poet Baudelaire's question, "Is there anything more charming, more fertile and positively exciting than the commonplace?'' The answer, in the context of this show, has to be `No'.

A catalogue of some sort would be welcome, if only to provide a permanent record of a relatively modest exhibition which, for sheer viewing delight, is one of the most intriguing and enjoyable yet seen at the National Gallery.

PATRICIA CALNAN QUENCHING THIRST THE FRENCH WAY -- One of the studies by Henri Cartier Bresson, featured in `Quenching Thirst', the current photographic show at the Bermuda National Gallery.