Slovak director Dušan Hanák's 1972 documentary Pictures of the Old World (Obrazy starého sveta) is a real rediscovery, another in the remarkable haul that distributor Second Run has brought us from the Eastern European film archives which that outfit has long been exploring. It’s an unusual film at first viewing, and one which grows in power, at times achieving an almost ecstatic sense of life itself, its laughter and tears, combined with a pronounced Surrealism.

Captured in monochromes ranging from the most delicate honeyed golds to robust gradations of aubergine and deep brown, the earliest photographs still provoke a shiver of surprise and excitement. Even now, their very existence seems miraculous, and the blur of a face, or the lost swish of a horse’s tail signifies the photographer’s pitched battle with time, never quite managing to make it stop altogether.

We are sitting in the lobby of the National Theatre in the early afternoon waiting for the photocall for Dara to begin. Six or seven photographers, one woman, all dressed in jeans and dark jackets with large camera bags, some on wheels. There is not much conversation. As a relative newcomer I don't normally speak, but on this occasion I venture a remark.

“I have seen this play.”

After a pause one of the company says, “You're keen.”

I explain that I went to a preview. Another silence then, “In one sentence, what's it about?”

“It's about Sharia law.”

Alice is always with us; the most quoted work of literature, after the Bible and Shakespeare. In fact, Desert Island Discs should probably add Alice to the mandatory Bible and Shakespeare as an automatic inclusion for the survival kit.

Photographer Rena Effendi’s current exhibition, "Zones of Silence", at London's Mosaic Rooms includes work from four of her recent series, and it’s hard not to see a link between them – displacement. As the exhibition notes explain: these are lives lived in areas of the world that have become invisible.

This huge exhibition is an awesome and terrifying compilation of photographs of the sites of conflict, and the remnants of wars and conflicts of all kinds – local, civil, short, long, global, technological, industrial and hand-to-hand. Taken from the mid 19^th century to the present, the images – hundreds, perhaps even well over a thousand –  are oblique and often incomprehensible or unidentifiable without the expansive wall captions. This is a show requiring us to read as well as look. 

Printed large in glorious colour is a row of photographs of Russian women wearing bobble hats (main picture and pictured below). There’s a fuzzy red one, a woolly brown one, one with red stripes against black and another with raised white stripes. Seen from behind, these hand-knitted globes look like a newly discovered breed of sea anemone or a display of exotic cacti.

It is hard to know whether the thematic and stylistic threads running through this year’s Taylor Wessing Prize are evidence of some general shift in approach, or simply reflect the judges’ tastes. In any case, where last year’s shortlist featured stark portraits highlighting the tricky power relationships between photographer and subject, this year’s competition tends towards something gentler and more empathetic – an altogether homelier sort of photography.

It is an extraordinary scene. John Maloof stands over box after box after box of the belongings of Vivian Maier. They contain photographic negatives, undeveloped film, address labels, receipts, tickets and even teeth. In all, there are around 100,000 negatives and 700 undeveloped rolls of film. Soon after acquiring this material, Maloof scanned some of the photos, put them on the internet and it took off. The formerly unknown Chicago-based nanny and housekeeper became a buzz photographer, compared with greats like Diane Arbus and Weegee.

Chris Christodoulou is the official Proms photographer, writes David Nice. From his uniquely privileged position behind a velvet curtain, he captures the white heat of performance. The official shots roll off the press a couple of hours after the concert, but for the past five years our man in the Albert Hall has supplied theartsdesk with unofficial contraband images of conductors in action.