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Just three presenters – were to have been four but………..

Tony Othen opened, considering the different ways in which photos contribute to the public memory. Some of his 1970s social documentary work on housing conditions is now available to researchers through a commercial picture library but one photo on a closed Facebook page devoted to a dead Derbyshire pit village had brought on a deluge of reminiscence and conversation within an hour. The work which had been external commentary had become an essential part of the internal life of the village diaspora. Our conversation focused on that, on the past remembered or romanticised and the question whether the quality of the photos helped alert the quite passionate interest in their content.

Poolsbrook link: Poolsbrook

Shirebrook link: Shirebrook

 

We stayed with questions of past and present as Anita Strasser took us on a walk on the Stone Sea, a mountain area of Austria which had been her birthplace. After many years of returning, she had decided to document both the landscape and the people who work on it. We saw the fruit of the first summer of a long project. Her concern was to show both the depth of some traditions and the evidences of a globalised world including the negative effects of consumer tourism. The medium was B&W film with strong grain. Cliche was successfully avoided, not least, one suspects, because of her deeper knowledge of the place.

Anita LIP image

 

Last Steven Stewart returned with a set of photos from Rathbonia – his name for a corner of Fitzrovia (and as Londoners you should know where that is). The motivation for a set begun almost accidentally was again reminiscence of working nearby and of the use of certain street locations in the film Peeping Tom. The discussion ran around how one communicates a cultural resonance, or the personal significance of a place; how to ‘construct’ a reference to the past and have it understood.

Hanway Place Steve Stewart

The next Greenwich meeting will be on 20th April 6.00pm at the Greenwich Gallery, Peyton Place, Royal Hill, Greenwich SE10. Proposals for presentations to John Levett.

Report by Peter Luck