Image © Ingrid Newton

Online Zoom meeting held 10 March 2021

With a total of 20 contributors, cLIP members clearly connected with this month’s topic ‘Connections’! It evoked rich and varied responses: physical, digital and emotional connections; man-made, interpersonal and as narrative.

Man-made connections include riveted railway bridges and the arched tunnels we rely on for transportation links (Hady, Austin), electrical plugs and telephone masts we need for power and communication (Steve and Alec), doors and windows that provide the interface between outside and inside, the public and the private (Astrid). We also connect with a particular place, as Dorota does with Sitges in Spain, and with nature – as Heather does with the roots of dead ivy still clinging to and binding a wrought iron fence together. Interpersonal, the connection between people, included family connections or school children in Kerala as captured by Austin; the invisible bond between an elderly couple or the warm embrace between close friends on Hampstead Heath (Anna). Sometimes our personal space is invaded, squashed up in a lift as the doors close, captured by Sukhy. The people in the photograph are often connected, but equally there is the triangulation between the subjects and the person capturing the moment as in Rashida’s intimate family photo. People can connect emotionally through dance, as in Raj’s photos of traditional Indian Navrati dancing, or between the choir and the conductor, as in Jim’s photo taken in St Albans Abbey. Janet showed how we can connect to people from past ages, through cave paintings in Libya dating from 1200 BC .

However sometimes our new world means we are less connected: Geoff explores this in a set of images of selfies reflected in a mirror, posing the question “does the digital make a real, new connection or remove a much-needed physical connection?”.

Narrative was presented as sets or pairs of images. A sequence of images by Edey show the story of the Paisley pattern connecting the original Indian design with the town in Scotland, her great-great grandparents and the mill on the River Wandle near her home. Frankie made connections by pairing
images as diptychs, some taken at the same time but others matched thematically. Eve also had pairs of images, one taken by her and the other by a photographic collaborator – a thematic connection between the images and an artistic connection with a friend she is yet to meet. Ingrid also presented
images in sets of two, the first being the photograph of an item found at her late father’s home with the second, a photo from the family album in which the item is present. Somehow this beautiful set of photographs encapsulated the physical and the emotional, the man-made and the personal,
underpinned with a family narrative.

Portraits

At the start of the session, as an extension to last month’s meeting, Simon presented a number of carefully lit portraits, with landscapes viewed through windows behind the sitters reminiscent of Renaissance paintings.

Alan Larsen

Janet Nabney

Austin Guest

Steve Jones

Edith Templeton

Simon Zebu

Frankie McAllister

Ingrid Newton

Anna Lerner

Jim Paterson