Featured image © Chloë Sastry
The theme for the September meeting was ‘Festivals’. Seventeen people attended and there
were ten presentations: five on ‘Festivals’, then five personal projects.
© Mirela Kunic
Mirela photographed installations around the Brugge which are part of the Triennial Contemporary
Art Architecture festival. All the installations had a connection to the city’s history. The ‘Empty
Drop’ installation by Japanese architects aimed to create an empty space in a busy city. Other
installations shown included ‘Under the carpet’ a rolled up road over a wall which invited
rediscovery of a forgotten road linking a hospital to the community, and ‘Grains of Paradise’ a
series of blackened proas boats as floating herb and spice gardens symbolising historical trade
with Africa.
© Alec Wyllie
Alec captured the buzz of the Edinburgh Festival with this image on one of the few sunny day. His
images featured the festival in the context of the city’s architecture along with its performance
venues, tourists, street performers and art galleries including the Edinburgh Photographic Society
exhibition.
© Raj Munisami
Raj showed images of South Indian heritage festivals with the aim of promoting cultural
appreciation and to celebrate diversity. His featured image was taken at the festival of colour in
the Watford temple. His body of work spanned venues around London showing dance
performances centred on Hindu deities, temple processions with chariots, women carrying pots
as offerings to deities, musicians playing tradition instruments, and a Sikh festival procession in
Southall led by Panj Piaras gurus dressed in the yellow of warriors carrying swords.
© Chloë Sastry
Chloë showed images of the Feria Del Caballo where celebrations centre on fine horses and their
uniformed coach men/women often drinking fino sherry or in this case a cola! Nowadays the
festival includes women in beautiful traditional ruffled dresses dancing flamenco. Rather than ask
people in the crowd to pose, Chloë captured the atmosphere by focussing on evocative details of
dancers and horses with their coachmen. The images are reminiscent of a fashion shoot with
bold colours and composition effused with reflected light all adding a dream like quality.
© Eva Turrell
Eva showed images taken as festivals which she attended as part of her outreach work for the
Samaritans. This well composed featured image was from the Bikers Festival at Ragley Hall
Warwickshire. She described the bikers as having great community spirit, very friendly, well
behaved and exceptionally tidy. She also attended the large Boomtown Festival, Festival of Trees,
Flackstock Festival and the Kendal Festival which became a mud bath as witness by an image
she took of her own feet in wellies sinking into the mud.
© Austin Guest
Austin showed mostly stage shots from the Cambridge Folk Festival, this one featuring a
performance by Flamy Grant. Although using an unobtrusive small camera in low light he still
managed to capture the atmospheric stage lighting and performers’ personas, including one of
Robert Plant and Suzi Dian.
© Claudiu Burlacu
The first of the personal projects shown was Claudiu’s visit to Eel Pie Island. The island is on the
Thames near Twickenham and has a couple of open days each year. It’s home to about 120
people in 50 houses, art studios and a couple of boat yards The whole place had a relaxed
ageing artsy vibe which Claudiu captured in this photos of a seating area. The island’s only hotel
famously hosted the music scene in the 1960s. It featured acts such as The Who, Rolling Stones,
Pink Floyd, Genesis, Deep Purple!
© Frankie McAllister
Frankie’s project explores her feeling of familiarity with her father’s home town. She knew about
the town and its surroundings only from family stories and her fathers painting’s, yet felt a
familiarity with it on her first visit. Visually, Frankie conveyed the notion of inherited memory as
fragmented or inaccurate by using intentional camera movement or layered multiple exposures
depending on the subject and her feelings. She is researching the means of inheriting memories
e.g. though collective memory or epigenetics.
© Henry Rice
Henry’s project dealt with the fallibility of visual memory by visiting a city for 24 hours, noting
scenes using a camera and subsequently reconstructing an overall memory of the place. HIs
visual notes contain cityscapes which caught his eye as well as closeups in which he captures
colour palettes. The featured image is a memory synthesised from 24 images taken in London.
The image caused a debate about where art photography images should be viewed. It concluded
that there shouldn’t be a limit for arts sake, and they can appear printed on merch, in digital forms
on social media and websites, as well as the traditional gallery or collector’s wall.
© Janet Nabney
Janet explored layering of images through reflections in office block window and in camera
multiple exposures. Her subjects were scenes around the Barbican including reflections of
people in the perspex protecting Banksy’s mural a tributes to Jean-MIcel Basquiat. In the
featured image she experimented with multiple exposures of a red flower to give the impression of
its movement in the wind.
© Fred Kavalier
In what could be a tribute to Duchamp, Fred’s project produced a typology of urinals around
Highgate. Taken from a low point of view the images accentuate the playful proposition that
urinals are art objects hung on a wall. This insight into the Gents was received as an amusing eye
opener by the ladies at the meeting.