As usual four presenters. We like to give time for developing a presentation or a critique of it.
First off was Steven Stewart who has been investigating the historic gateways to the City of London, finding drawings and engravings of them and photographing the present-day development at their sites. We talked of the degree of precision needed to link the present day image to the past history.
Steven Stewart
Shanne Ong showed a selection of prints from his archive of last year, raising a number of themes running in his work: the importance of place, the possible breaking of rules, and the value of repetition (revisiting the same Italian festival three years running and seeing a decided change in approach over that time). Some discussion too of the potential of photography as an opening to social contact.
Shanne Ong
Peter Luck showed three photographs of St Saviour’s Dock in the early 1950s which he had printed recently for a talk on the history of the dock, using negatives taken by his father. We talked about the dual role of such photographs as family archive and as public archive (prints promised to Southwark Local History Library) and some acknowledgement of the longevity of the negative and the darkroom print.
St Saviour’s Dock, photographed 1952-4 by Sidney Luck, printed 2016 by Peter Luck
Angelika Berndt had undertaken a commission to photograph in the Kafa forest region of Ethiopia and brought to the meeting a set telling of the women who make a traditional plate used for the baking of an equally traditional form of bread. Angelika spoke of her photography as an effort of understanding, a research into actual cultures, in this instance working with an environmental charity to understand and record the traditional way of life and how it meshes with and tends to preserve its forest environment. Both the life and the environment are under threat.
Angelika Berndt
The next Greenwich meeting will be on 16th March 6.00pm at the Greenwich Gallery, Peyton Place, Royal Hill, Greenwich SE10.
Report by Peter Luck