Double Exposure by Johnstone Brian;

Author:Johnstone, Brian;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Saraband
Published: 2017-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

10

Most Unusual

In the 1980s I had become seriously engaged with photography. A regular for a number of years at my local camera club, I was even elected society president for a while. With a few competition wins, some inclusions in group shows and a couple of solo exhibitions to my name, I was becoming a regular at various clubs around the area. There I would talk about my photographic work and show audio-visual presentations, often including poetry to accompany the slides. It wouldn’t last, but for a time I reckoned this was where my creative impulses would take me.

Perhaps it was my competition wins, but more likely it was my being elevated to the post of president, even if only of a photographic society, that sparked my mother’s interest. She had always been frustrated by my lack of promotion in my teaching career, never able to understand why my background – private school, frequent prize-winner, university graduate – hadn’t immediately ensured my appointment as Director of Education. After all, she had made many sacrifices to ensure my future. But in truth the heart of her concern was her own ambition for me; she could never grasp why I had not been promoted to head teacher, or at least assistant head, not appreciating that pedigree counted for little with the local council education committee.

Now, though, Bea began to show an interest in my photography – perhaps she was envisaging me as some sort of nascent Lichfield or Snowdon. Having seen a few of my prints, and even having accepted the gift of one which she regarded highly enough to hang in the lounge – only the second framed work in there – she decided she’d like to take a look at one of my AV presentations.

At that time I was drawn more and more to taking abstract shots featuring strong colours and patterns, picked out either in close up, or at a distance through the isolation of elements using a long lens. As the slides clicked one after the other through the projector, I could tell that Bea was getting increasingly baffled by my compositional approach. Where were the misty mountains in the glen, the Highland castle at sunset, the fishing trawler beating up The Minch? Where was the artfully arranged vase of flowers or the view of a burgeoning garden in spring? Where were the portraits, the still lives, the glorious landscapes? There was nothing to compare with the Peter Scott Flight of Geese she had on her dining room wall, or the Vernon Ward flower print that hung above the settee in the lounge. But, more particularly, why was there a total lack of any conventional ‘view’ in even one of my shots?

It was then that she resorted to one of her stock comments. ‘Most unusual,’ came the response to slide after slide.

Even – ‘Most unusual!’ to those shots of a more rigorously abstract nature, which she must have been struggling to comprehend, even to see what the point of taking them was.

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