Art of photography

A GROUP of photographers is exhibiting their work in
Watlington today (Friday) and tomorrow.

The Watlington Photographic Collective, which began about three years ago, has members from a variety of backgrounds and with a range of styles.

Dee Robinson, a founder member, has retired so now takes pictures for pleasure, although she still does some professional work.

Her interest in photography began when she was 12 and her parents bought her a Box Brownie, which she still has.

Dee says: “I took pictures of everything. I took a lot of my dog. As I got older and started travelling, my camera came with me most places. I got my first proper camera at college while working a Saturday job at a pharmacy.

“I have always loved architecture. I would take street scenes but wait for people to leave the image before taking it. One day, someone said to me, ‘Nice pictures, Dee, but where are the people?’ That’s when I realised that the street is a theatre and the people on it actors. That’s what life is really all about.

“I moved to Watlington about eight years ago and started exhibiting in Artweeks. I realised when I looked through that there were about 650 artists, 28 of them photographers. I felt we needed to band together because we would be stronger, so I started the group. There were six of us at first and we have been showing together ever since. The collective is always changing.”

Dee enjoys taking on photography projects.

She says: “I did a project on the allotments in Watlington about five years ago. It took me about 18 months and you really get down and dirty.”

During lockdown, she photographed “tat” around her house in a still life series that is included in the exhibition.

She said: “It is so different from the other things I have done in Artweeks. My installation is going to be 25 tiny (25mm square) photographs. You can play with them. I want people to say, ‘Well, I certainly don’t want them all but I’d like three’ and they can make it their own, like a collage.”

Her other projects have included an “Inspired by” series, where she photographed Watlington residents posing as famous photographs and paintings.

She says: “Like many amateurs, I dot around rather than specialise. I have a butterfly mind; I like to have a go at everything. At the moment, I am interested in still life. I took inspiration from Irving Penn’s still life images. I also like a lot of American photographers like Saul Leiter and early ones like Eugène Atget — they are so modern, although they were taken back in the early 19th century.

“I am already thinking about my next project. It is going to be on personal style. I recently followed a young man into the
Co-op with the most amazing haircut. I asked to photograph him and he said ‘yes’ but I wanted the back of him, not the front. Being of a certain age and being female has its benefits: you can tap someone on the back and it doesn’t seem sleazy.

“I want to photograph people with personal style, whether they are in their eighties or twenties. It is very interesting to me. Well, as my mother would say, ‘Whatever keeps you off the street, dear’.”

Caroline Hyman is a professional photographer and fine artist as well as being a founding member of the collective.

She says: “I have been working in photography since I was 18, which is a long, long time ago.

“I got into it by accident — I just needed a job. I got my first job as an assistant to a fashion photographer called Desmond Russell in London. In the interview, I said I knew a lot about photography, which wasn’t strictly true.

“I would take Desmond’s portfolio to different advertising agencies and get him work as well as set up lights and book models. I was essentially his PA.

“I didn’t know anything but everything was happening in London at the time: David Bailey was just starting out, Donovan, Brian Duffy, everyone.

“I worked with Jean Shrimpton: she was lovely and stunning, so unspoilt. David Bailey was quite funny but difficult for the girls he worked with. To get the reactions he wanted, he had to be quite intimidating.

“London was really swinging and I had a great time. It was also where I met my husband, Ken, who was a friend of Desmond. After we got married, we moved to Los Angeles. I did a three-year fine art course at California State, Northridge College, where I learned more about alternative processes and the dark room side.

“My husband was running Seven Arts Productions and Warner Brothers at the time. We are a creative family. My oldest son is a production designer in the film industry, so he carried on the film tradition.

“America was quite different from London. Everything was starting to switch and happen there instead of London. It was the time of Flower Power: people had flowers in their hair, the music scene was kicking off and Woodstock was happening. But there was also a big drug scene.”

Caroline has spent the last 33 years living in Skirmett and her son lives in Watlington.

“I feel like I know the area well,” she says. “I have a studio in a barn in my house. I had one in London but it was a faff going back and forth all the time, so I built one here.

“I am interested in still life and nature photography. I have always had an affinity with flowers, both when they are in full bloom and dying or dead. A vase of tulips that start to droop over and the petals fall off makes wonderful shapes.

“I have been working on a series called Sub Zero, which is where I freeze flowers in ice. They freeze so randomly and in such an abstract way, you have no control over it. I photograph them on a light box to get the pictures really sharp. When they lie frozen, they almost look three-dimensional and the light from behind makes them look bright and detailed.

“I was inspired by seeing leaves frozen in a puddle while on a walk a few winters ago. I thought that could be interesting, so I tried it myself and I really liked how random the results were.

“A long time ago I did a book called A Portrait of Hambleden Valley, inspired by a book Richard Avedon did on the Wild West. I photographed a random collection of people, from a vicar to a gamekeeper, in front of a white backdrop and the portraits were so strong.

“The book still sells more than 20 years later in the village shop and on Amazon. People often say to do another book but it has been 23 years since the first one and the older people I photographed have died. They were part of history and had spent their whole lives there. Younger people don’t have that because they live a more temporary lifestyle and don’t stay in the same place.”

Rachel Wallace, who lives in Frieth, has been a professional photographer for 25 years. She says a good photograph is “when you make something instinctive that people can respond to. It needs to draw you in and you might not be able to put it in words, but it can trigger an emotional reaction”.

Her favourite subject is our relationship to the land.

Rachel says: “I am interested in natural landscapes and what I call the ‘inverted world’, which is when I play with you when you’re looking at an image and you have to think about what it is. I have a piece which is pastel-coloured water but it looks like a painting by Camille Corot.

“My work is quite psychological, abstract and weird. When people understand what I am doing, it gives me a real thrill.

“Once someone said they liked my precision, which was interesting because my work is very balanced, so it felt good that someone had acknowledged and recognised what I was trying to do.

“I recently undertook a course to become an accredited carbon literacy photographer, so I can photograph sustainably.

“I tend not to develop film now, as I use mostly digital, but I use hemp and bamboo paper as well as sustainable ink. They have a lovely finish to print but cost more. Companies are starting to use more sustainable materials for their prints anyway, such as cellulose and cotton rag.”

Rachel first used a camera when she was six.

She says: “I just loved to take photos of anything. The first photo I have with a negative was of my cat. I also captured people, landscapes, plants and trees.”

She was the last person to join the collective. “I joined last year for the exhibition in Watlington during Oxfordshire Artweeks,” she says. “It is a great group of people and Dee is excellent at organising. I am a bit last minute dot com and she chases me and reminds me about things but is always calm and cool.

“It is nice to work with others. Working in photography, you are often on your own. It provides another area to show your work and another market. It is also really good to work with different styles. We encourage each other.”

John Hailstone, who lives in Wallingford, joined the group about two years ago. His background is in engineering but he took early retirement in 2017 and decided to do freelance photography full-time.

He says: “I have been doing photography since I was 10, which is now more than 50 years ago. I liked aircraft and had been given a Kodak Instamatic. I went to air shows, such as one in Benson, where I photographed a Lockheed Hercules.

“The film format was square and the lens was wide-angled. I stood close to the aircraft, with its wings spread out in the corners. I ended up entering it into the Tilehurst eisteddfod, a photography competition, and won a prize, so I carried on with photography.

“At university I bought my first single-lens reflex camera and took black and white photos. I would develop them in my bathroom, which I had converted into a dark room, the classic way at the time. I blacked out the windows and had a wooden panel over the bathtub.

“My favourite subjects are the natural environment and music photography. I was the official photographer for Bunkfest in Wallingford this year. It was fantastic to be able to photograph live music again after lockdown.”

John is interested in the technical side of photographic processes and looks to a lot of different photographers and artists for inspiration.

He says: “I like Georgia O’Keeffe’s art, which is quite thought-provoking, I think David Bailey’s black and whites are fantastic and for landscape I particularly admire Ansel Adams and Courtney Pine.

“I have tons of photography books, which take up a whole bookcase in my house.

“At this exhibition, my favourite is probably the photograph of a lock on an old door, for which I used the solarisation technique. This process reverses some tones. For example, light grey turns to dark grey but black and white stay the same.

“I post every so often on Instagram solarised images for what I call #solarisationsunday. It’s all a bit wacky but it is very fun. Like Freeman Patterson, I believe in photography for the joy of it.”

John says the collective is “very supportive”, explaining: “We all help in different ways, We all contribute to achieve something interesting.”

Andrew Kerr, who is originally from Belfast, is a psychologist but says photography has always been in the background.

He has taken photos for publications including the Irish Times and Belfast Telegraph.

He started photographing when he was about 10 years old and picked up an old folding camera his father had from the Second World War.

Last year, he was invited by the curators of Photo London to exhibit his series taken on a 10,000-mile motorcycle ride across America at Somerset House.

Andrew said: “It is one of the most prestigious photographic institutions and around 33,000 people visited in a week. Normally you would have to apply, so to be invited was absolutely amazing. To be up on the walls with the likes of David Bailey was fantastic and probably my career highlight.”

He moved to London after graduating and lived in Leamington Spa until he married a woman from Watlington and moved there.

This is the first photographic
collective he has belonged to. Andrew said: “It is very stimulating and great to be involved with people who are artists and creators. Too many people are concerned with equipment. I am not a camera nerd, I am just into the finished product. We all have a range of styles but I am into documentary photography. I did a series on a garage in my old village which had been owned by the same family for nearly 100 years.”

Documentary photography interests him because “a lot of stuff passes us by”. Andrew said: “I am interested in the social aspect of what is going on around us. For example, if you went to London for the first time, you would be interested in Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London. But you might miss the local businesses and churches that get pulled down and redeveloped. It is all about moving slowly, stopping and noticing the details around you.”

• The Watlington Photographic Collective are showing their works at 12 High Street today and tomorrow from 9.30am to 4.30pm.