The June edition of The Crossing Lines Group was a rambling affair.

The ramble was related to two coastal/estuary towns: Brighton and Bristol.

John Levett had taken [made] a recent detour of Bristol. It was a two-day affair and followed the course of John  Levett’s usual response to urban walking: start and don’t stop for eight hours and photograph in between. The two-hundred and fifty-odd images were projected. The collection represented its sources well and the composition of the city was finely illustrated. The problem for John Levett was that the ‘experience of photography’ was no more enlightening for JL than numerous previous detours of British cities. There is a been-here-before feel to the trajectory of walking a city. This photographer knows what he will get because he knows the ‘triggers’ that send him in one direction rather than another. The ‘type’ of image that forms the Bristol collection is represented throughout his archive.

The link with Brighton was instructive. Gill Golding recently created a detour of her home city of Brighton. The first revelation was that Brighton had been designated a city at the time of the last Jubilee bash. This had passed by some of us. Nevertheless, the royal processional began at the station and was downhill all the way from there. Gill’s knowledge of Brighton is phenomenal and her backgrounds to the street histories made great sense of the topography. JL acknowledged to himself that there were significant parallels in both Bristol and Brighton and an opportunity to avoid the routine — a barber’s shop-front photo would suffice for the day. The revelation of Gill’s detour was it’s opening-up of the industrial history of Brighton; new to us all.

Rosanna Goodchild made a welcome return to Crossing Lines with recent work from her engagement with the street dwellers of Bristol. These were not portraits in the traditional sense but rather indicative images. Her work illustrated the street spaces that were used by the displaced citizens of Bristol. Rosanna had photographed the spaces of Bristol that were used by those dislodged from traditional living quarters and who had sought ‘safe’ places within the urban centre. Rosanna had followed-up these spaces and had recorded how the spaces evolved into spaces of ‘comfort’. ‘Comfort’ might not seem to be appropriate in this context but the images illustrated a sense of familiarity and semi-temporary-permanence: a strange use of words there but Rosanna’s follow-up work suggested a ‘caring’ of the space had been on-going.

Crossing Lines is taking a Summer break this year. The next meeting will be in September; details to follow.

John Levett