Image © Yas Crawford

On-line Zoom meeting held 09 December 2020

This month’s topic ‘Image and Text’ evoked a number or different responses, while some displayed images based on ‘Own Projects’.

Image and Text
In some cultures, the yew tree symbolises both death and resurrection. In one of her poems Sylvia Plath writes “the message of the yew tree is blackness”. Edey’s beautiful black and white images place the text centrally, giving the yew tree its own voice: “undying I sit amongst the dead”. Eve has likewise used poetic references – this time Robert Frost’s “Gathering Leaves” – in her single image. Experimenting with shutter speeds, her son throws up gathered leaves with the text “But the mountains I raise / elude my embrance” alongside. Dorota effectively created her own performance art by alternating red and yellow leaves and using these to form the words “Keep safe” – a transient work of play and discovery. Alec captured the plethora of signs in the modern world – some helful, some instructional and some prohibitive. Do we not have the capacity to make your own decisions? Tony also chose to show photographs of text, such as street sign seemingly hovering in the hedgeway or a letter box with the word ‘Letters’ on the flap. Anna also photographed text on signs, rather than adding text to an image. The fading notice announcing the 110th anniversary of the Bowls Club perhaps reflecting the fading nature of the club membership. Ingrid has drawn inspiration from B S Johnson’s ‘The Unfortunates’ – a “book in a box” in which the chapters are unbound – a mediation on death and the celebration of friendship. Ingrid presented powerful pairs of cyanotype images, the second being a degraded version of the first with text such as “How little I remember” reflecting the fading nature of memory. In sharp contrast, Jim’s images were of fit Aussie blokes in dayglo tops, competing in swimming races, the text being their names on the back of their rather tight budgie-smugglers. Simon referenced what he sees as the government’s “blurred lines ….mixed messages”. He uses intentional camera movement so the text “Help Save Lives” is barely legible. Yas’s fascination with the interface between science and art continues; she has displayed DNA code or bioinformatics flowing over images of the madonna and child.

Own Projects:
Hady has used post-processed double exposure to capture life towards the end of the second lockdown in an effort to uplift us, utilising autumnal colours or the evening light to do so. Janet also used post-manipulation to develop her earlier work where she creates a still life collage of family artefacts. Steve showed a great series of stark, even post-apocolyptic, black and white images of land near Dungerness (an area very popular with Kent-based photographers), utilising an infra-red converted cameras to generate dark, brooding skies and light foliage Heather used a lot of detail and texture, such as leaves against a dark trunk or dead ivy whose roots still cling to the wall or the branches of a previously coppiced tree resembling an untidy head of hair. Geoff made reference to time / slice reconstruction used in archaeology as a metaphor for what he tries to do. He re-constructs a still image from de-constructed moving images to mine the depth of the digital image. Austin has taken photographs to mark the 25th anniversary of Highgate Park. These range from goal posts illuminated by a milky sun to the details of frost-laden flowers. Astrid has used her photography as a visual walking meditation during her birth month of December. The use of a subtle colour pallete sooths her – there is beauty in what decays anticipating renewal. Finally Nusse, in “Rear Window” style, showed us a gripping series of photographs of crime in progress – with cocky but distinctly dodgy characters exchanging fistfuls of money, and fly-tipping on an adjacent cleared site.

Yas Crawford

Astrid Zweynert

Eve Milner

Jim Paterson

Steve Jones

Austin Guest

Janet Nabney

Edith Templeton

Alec Wyllie

Ingrid Newton

Simon Zebu