Angelika Berndt

Dmitri Stepanenko

Anne-Marie Glasheen

One of the joys of meeting in the Greenwich Gallery is that we may be surrounded by an interesting exhibition. This was one of those times and the photographer Ross Andrews was on hand to give an impromptu talk on his work.

With a scientific background and being largely self-taught in photography, his practice is concerned to show the sea coast from within the sea, observing the changing colour of the water particularly on his native Kent coast where underlying chalk, sand or algae produce different colours in very close locations. At great risk, many of the photos are taken from within the breaking wave, the timing needed being so precise that perhaps a couple of dozen separate visits will be needed to get the image he wants.

Back to the group members: Angelika Berndt had photographed in Nanjing in 2015, then in Chongqing and had exhibited in China earlier this year . Her China Today project, contrasting traditional areas of the cities with the modern and also showing the continuation of rural practices in the city (eg: urban farming), is in a sense done, but are there means of keeping the material alive and relevant, short of making further visits which require backing? We didn’t really answer the question but it is one deserving of further thought.

Dmitri Stepanenko showed a selection of images, mostly from his recent book ‘Heavy Colour’. Having lived in southern Europe for some years and then here in the grey north, he had set himself the task of finding strong colour in the city. Working in a vein close to street photography, he had found it. He had also produced a set of straightforward compositions revealing something of city life.

Anne-Marie Glasheen made a welcome return with an untypically random set of urban scenes: people in the city quite fondly but quizzically observed, a sequence of images focussed on found words, evidences of the municipal. An enjoyable end to the presentations before a brief closing discussion of one or two topics. (Peter Luck}