Only three presentations this time but a decent-sized gathering found plenty to discuss.

Carol Kenna opened with a successful  evocation of

a village in the far south-west of Ireland using images and composed spoken text together. Images and text were also given separately and generally thought to stand up pretty well. Encouragement given to perhaps develop it into a small book.

Tony Othen followed with his response to a dictum of Cartier-Bresson’s: “Photography is a matter of visual geometry”, first finding how C-B had used shape and form to govern the (over-celebrated?) decisive moment while never slipping into pure abstraction. Tony’s own work (currently on view at the Greenwich Gallery) does often tend toward abstraction. Debate covered the relation between the geometric and the moment evident in the photographer’s timing in relation to changing light or the placing of passers-by, and the matter of context – how the more pure abstraction may deny context. Which is the more significant in any one instance?

We closed with two sets of 24 prints each by Sarah Hickson, one in colour and one B&W, both on postcard-sized tablets of art paper. These images were taken during a week-long artistic ‘gathering’ in rural France, not as a commission or an attempt to document but as a personal, considered response to mood, people, landscape, interior space. The two sets of prints were not of the same images so no direct comparison could be made but there was a strong general preference for the B&W set, particularly for a group of portraits. It seems that colour may often dilute the impact of photos.

Peter Luck