The August edition of The Crossing Lines Group featured Mo Greig on Greasy Spoons, Rosanna Goodchild with new work related to music photography and the interplay of professional versus semi and amateur; John Levett on pre- & post-Olympic Stratford; plus a ‘discovered’ Paul Halliday manuscript on Stories of Absence and Memory.

Mo’s work is in its early stages & her approach to working within a dynamic situation is to take time & be patient. It’s a rare quality that I rarely experience personally. Mo’s got the nub of it. Her project is on-going.

Mo Greig

Rosanna is moving into new territory too. She has spent a few years now in engaging closely with the homeless and those in vulnerable accommodation & has decided to move into the arena of music performance. it’s a bold move into a highly-populated environment. We’ll keep a watch on the evolution.

Apart from Mo’s & Rosanna’s contributions the evening was a bit of a rambling affair. This is a positive approach to ideas that have yet to be formed & very much in the spirit of The Crossing Lines Group. John Levett & Claire Reddleman have been walking the East End through to Stratford.

Claire Reddleman

Claire had questioned if anyone would believe that Stratford from Three Mills to the transport interchange had hosted an Olympic Games. This sent John Levett back to his photography of the early days of the transformation & the photography’s purpose. The purpose was its value in locating bits of memory & their associations in maintaining a grip on his past. The walk: from Mill House at Three Mills in Bromley-by-Bow to Bow Basin.

John Levett

A ‘lost’ document written by Paul Halliday brought the meeting to a close. It was a further opportunity to consider ‘purposes’. Here’s one of Paul’s questions: “What capacity does the camera have to describe and at times to intervene in the world?” He goes on to say: “What I do know is that the photography concerned with impassion ate recording, with uncritical indexicality, holds no appeal to me”. It’s a document that asks us to question what we do & why we do it. It’s about the ‘before’ as well as the moment & its after-life. The Crossing Lines Group will return to the document.

The next scheduled meeting of The Crossing Lines Group will be on Wednesday 6th September.

Report by John Levett