Image © Edith Templeton
Online Zoom meeting held 06 October 2020
This month’s topic was ‘Surreal’, with contributors broadening the definition to include abstract, uncanny, bizarre, unreal or dreamlike.
In lockdown, Simon set himself the challenge of taking photographs in his kitchen, three a day, with increasingly forced abstraction, often using deliberate camera movement. Robin also used camera movement transforming the appearance of hard-edged modern steel & glass buildings into silky fabrics. Jim’s use of in-camera software made islands at sunset appear unreal, like papercuts, overshadowed by post-apocalyptic skies. The bizarre mannequins in high-end stores combined reflections of New York City’s streetscape produced a dreamlike quality in Rashida’s photos. Coincidentally Edey also photographed mannequins, this time in a closing down sale where the collection of perfectly sculpted torsos and limbs produced a fascinating “body of work”! Austin showed a black and white image of mannequins in a Soho shop window, with a high contrast inspired by Paolo Pellegrini’s work.
Nusse also liked a sense of the absurd with a series of well observed images she happened to “bump into”on her journey through life. Yas’s human forms are set in a landscape where she tries to make the invisible visible – highlighting the fact that life for those suffering from chronic fatigue can feel surreal. Ingrid’s photos were taken at her father’s house where she meditates on his changed circumstances – his surroundings reflected in picture frames with their ghostly images superimposed on the room. Janet photo-shopped images of her grandson in his sailor suit sitting him on a rosebud – truly surreal and reminiscent of the Cottingley Fairies. Jan also addressed the topic in a direct way, with a Cuban cash register reflecting the surreal levels of inflation and a manipulated image of Arc de Triomphe where his use of tilt-shift make real cars look like models. Anna feels that her photographs are surreal in any case, and rather than being a deliberate decision she is drawn to the strange, the ambiguous and the abstract like her “ladder to nowhere”. Frankie created a triptych transforming an orange-clove pomander, used traditionally to ward of illness, into the Covid-19 virus itself.
Edith Templeton
Ingrid Newton
Simon Zebu
Chris Burrows
Janet Nabney
Frankie McAllister
Austin Guest
Eve Milner
Jim Paterson
Yas Crawford
Robin Barr
Jan Cylwik