Photography: Nigel Shafran photographs unseen corners of the V&A for their Annual Review

You can spot some pretty interesting things if, when walking around a museum, you take your eye off the exhibits for a moment and instead focus on the environment they’re shown in. Sometimes even the Mona Lisa or Michelangelo’s David can pale next to the semi-audible chatter of camera-clad tourists and locals, glances between invigilators, shopkeepers, waiters in museum cafés, ticket sellers…

These are the aspects of London’s beautiful V&A museum that contemporary photographer Nigel Shafran captured for their Annual Review; see schoolboys caught off-guard wandering around hallways, sales assistants in the museum’s well-stocked shop busying themselves around the arrival of a new delivery, a historian restoring an antique in the basement and an invigilator caught in a daydream at her station. These “tenderly observed moments of human interaction” make for a pleasantly real overview of the role the V&A plays in London, welcoming as it does so many and such diverse crowds from all corners of the world. It also marks the last time you’ll try to go for a subtle nose-pick whilst hiding behind a medieval tapestry; you never known when Nigel might be lurking around the corner…