Inspired by Angelika other group members brought photos along on the theme Living in London. Here are a few:

by Brigitte Flock

by Brigitte Flock

by Carolyn

by Carolyn

by Jonny Baker

by Jonny Baker

by Sarah Wilkie

by Sarah Wilkie

At the August group meeting the theme was Living In London. Angelika Berndt gave a presentation on a project she has been working on. She says this about it...

Living in London
In temporary accommodation

The project was developed in 2022 as a lived-in self-experiment.

Over several months Angelika Berndt lived in different types of temporary accommodation in different parts of London. Accommodation types ranged from a room in a flat share, to a hostel, a fully furnished attic apartment and a sublet in a family home.

The experiment became as much a trial to find out how it feels to live in these different types of accommodation as it gave insights into the neighbourhoods themselves, their people, the supply chain and transport facilities.

Having lived in Ealing for many years, Angelika soon was to learn what social support; good access to supplies and transport was all about.

This photo research was first presented at Ealing LIP and is now available as a digital book.

Angelika Berndt

And here are some pages from the book

[Images by Frankie McAllister]

We decided to run a little challenge whereby we were paired off into twos and each person swapped a collection of their photographs for the other person to edit/curate into a smaller selection. The idea was to go through a process of deciding what went together, what the connections were, what the appeal was and to explore the issues around selection and curation. So far Dorota and Frankie have reviewed each other’s images, each coming up with completely different selections and now Sean and Carolyn have done the same with their two collections of black and white prints. Their process brought them both to very similar selections, each filtering images though into their different forms of connection.  We’ll carry on with this as and when the other pairs of photographers work through their assessment as it’s interesting to see how other people view your work.

Group member, Robert Vass, drew from his long experience working with Questors Theatre in Ealing both as a theatre photographer and as an actor, to give us a presentation on theatre photography. He explained the particular challenges and pitfalls of working in theatre conditions, the low light, the distortions of stage lighting specific to both LED and tungsten, and the difficulty in capturing actors in action. Apart from the constant of low light, the main challenge is that you are often dealing with a moving situation which means you sometimes catch actors in unflattering poses (Robert’s tip: wait till the actors have finished speaking!) so it is difficult to keep that balance between energy, motion and aesthetics. A variety of shots are always needed, often focusing in on one actor with another being in the frame but out of focus, so you need to remember which actors you have shot and in what combination so that you can avoid repetition. What’s always vital is to ensure you have a picture of everyone in a show. Robert feels that his experience as an actor has helped him significantly as he has an awareness of how the actors will behave and move around the stage, and what they are likely to do next at a given point in their performance.

Another issue with the photography is simply timing, as publicity shots for a production are often required well in advance of that production getting underway. So, with no costumes or sets, sometimes no actors, ingenuity becomes another essential for the theatre photographer. The type of publicity shots needed also varies with the production, and some creativity is required to take pictures that are reflective of the particular show. Robert showed a number of prints of different shows demonstrating the different aspects of the work as well as different types of show.  He also showed some images of the layouts of shots used in the in-theatre notice boards.

Robin's prints shared at January's meeting sparked this month's theme of Back In The Day. Group members brought some personal pictures and gave us all the opportunity to reflect on our own journeys with photography so that made it quite a special evening.

We travelled both in time and geography. Brigitte took us to Paris in 1972, Arun to experience colonial life in Zambia in the sixties and seventies, Carolyn to Portugal through a slide viewer! Richard had a selection including his first self portrait using a Zenit-E that brought back memories for some.

[Paris 1972 by Brigitte Flock]

It was great to see Ray Higginbottom now we're meeting on Wednesdays and he shared some prints from his archive using a range of processes. Jonny and Sean each shared informal family photographs. It stimulated thoughts on the tradition of the family album and post-holiday slideshows.

We also updated our plans for ideas for the rest of the year and Ray offered to chair March's meeting on the theme of Censorship.

There was lots of energy at the first meeting of 2023 with a mix of catching up, looking at photos, passing round books, and sharing ideas and offering contributions for group meetings and activities through the year ahead.

[Crystal Palace racing by Robin Segulem]

[Norland Rd by Robin Segulem]

Robin Segulem brought along some old prints. This has sparked the them of February's meeting - 'back in the day'. If you are coming do bring some photos from back in the day.

[Christmas at Kew by Jonny Baker]

Jonny passed round some photos from a visit to Kew lit up at night. These were all playing with slowing down the shutter speed to create blur - see his album on flickr.

[A photo from Winter Light by Frankie McAllister]

Frankie shared a zine and a book she had made - Urban Backgrounds and Winter Light. These merit a blog post in their own right so look out for that. Though here is an image from Winter Light

And plans for the year ahead will be posted here once we have finalised them

Happy new year! 

Just a quick heads up that meetings are now on the first Wednesday of the month in the upstairs rom at the Forester in Northfields. 

We were a fairly small group at The Forester pub on May 2 for our second live meeting. The main event was a presentation by Kyun Ngui on the Chris Steele-Perkins  book, ‘The Troubles’, featuring photographs from West Belfast in the late 70s, with text written by Paul McCorry.  Kyun describes it more fully below.  We also looked at an early rough layout of a Zine by Frankie McAllister, taken from her ongoing project Dividing Lines-Artificial Constructs also described in more detail below.

The Troubles by Chris Steele-Perkins. Published in 2020, described by Kyun Ngui:  The Troubles comprises images made by Chris Steele-Perkins on several occasions: from his first visit to Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1978 as part of a project looking at inner city poverty in the UK, then the Milltown Cemetery attack in 1988 and finally from 2008 (10 years after the Good Friday Agreement) when he was on assignment for The Times.

Chris Steele-Perkins, as he says from the Introduction, “intended to cover the situation from the standpoint of the underdog, the downtrodden: I was not neutral and was not interested in capturing it so.” By underdog, he meant the Catholic community, whom he stayed with on his first visit.

The images from his first visit captures that community, its leisure, entertainment, homes, fun and funerals. There are also images more familiarly associated with The Troubles like rioting and the military occupation.

He was there at the Milltown Cemetery attack in 1988. During the funeral for three Provisional IRA members killed by British special forces in Gibraltar, an Ulster Defence Association member attacked the mourners with hand grenades and pistols.

In 2008, 10 years after the Good Friday Agreement, Chris Steele-Perkins went back to Belfast on assignment for The Times. He looked up people he had photographed 30 years ago and interviewed them. The interviews are published in the book together with images of them in 2008 and 1978. The interviews give these people a voice. They, like most ordinary people, simply wanted to live their lives in peace and to have equal access to opportunities in Northern Ireland.

The book also includes a commissioned text about growing up in West Belfast by a friend of Chris Steele-Perkins, Paul McCorry (whom he met on his first visit in 1978). The text is atmospheric and anecdotal, rather than analytical.

The strength of this photobook lies in its giving glimpses into the ordinary lives and activities of the ordinary people in a Catholic community and in allowing their voices to speak in the 2008 interviews. Images of The Troubles have been predominantly about the military occupation and the rioting and violence that arose from it. It must be remembered that there are ordinary people, on both sides of the community, who simply want an ordinary life that many of us take for granted.

Frankie’s presentation was a run through of a very early draft pdf spread of a zine on her project ‘Dividing Lines – Artificial Constructs’, a long term project about the northern Irish border post- Brexit and the artificiality inherent in the imposition of externally applied borders to a landscape.

The project aims to depict concepts of disruption, artificiality and division through manipulated landscape photographs from the border country of Donegal. 

And lastly, the group discussed our forthcoming exhibition as part of Ealing BEAT. TRICKSTER Remakes the World is still sparking off a lot of ideas and debate from everyone but we agreed we will need to try to start getting a firmer idea of likely images, at least in indicative form, by end May.

written by Frankie McAllister

We got on a roll in February's meeting and planned the next few months activities which are...

Feb - Dan organising a nighttime City of London photography walk with some history thrown in for good measure. 

March meeting - theme of night photography so do bring along any photos on that theme. And we will share photos from the city walk in Feb . There may even be a quiz to interject. 

April meeting - Creating personal projects that re-ignite the creative spark - Ray to present/lead. And we will be sharing phots from the Trickster wheel of ruses challenge (see below)! Also in April an offer of a woodland visit

May - photobook sharing like with the Book of Veles - Kyun has one to share. Anyone else is welcome to offer!

Following Jonny's presentation in January on Trickster he had revisited the book and pulled out 45 ruses of trickster - ideas, sentences describing how trickster acts in the stories. These were put into a wheel and everyone present got a random spin and has been a ruse to take photos in response to. Some were pretty tricky! If you want to try it out the wheel of ruses is here. Simply click and watch the wheel spin. But if you do, let us know what you come up with. You must go with the first ruse that comes up!

Then as ever group members shared photos. Here's a selection of the delights...

["Early Morning at St Paul's" by Dan Dodman showing phots to the group for the first time. The view from the Golden Gallery of St Paul's cathedral (85 metres high) to the Tate Modern on a crisp October morning.]

[Inspired by the trickster theme Jonny Baker showed a few of thresholds and doorways]

[Miner Ian Turner, at the end of his shift. Aberpergwm Mine is the only remaining operational coal mine in the UK the only source of high-grade anthracite in Western Europe. Aberpergwm Mine, Glynneath, Neath, Wales, UK. July 30, 2021. Copyright Photo: Edmond Terakopian/2021]

[A protestor dances on the roof of the fake wedding bus used to block the road. Extinction Rebellion protestors block off the southern end of London Bridge. London, UK. August 31, 2021. Copyright Photo: Edmond Terakopian/2021]

[Ray Higginbottom shared some images that are part of a presentation around personal projects and ideas to get you motivated to pick your camera up and go out and shoot something different. These were from litter discarded in some Country lanes in Bucks. We will be revisiting this in the group.]