Photopia : All together, we are different

Title of work: From the river to the sea
Thames Path, London
Date: April 2022

From the river to the sea: I’m drawn to the geometries, abstractions, patterns and quirks of everyday urban spaces. Lockdown in London honed my habit of walking: I’d pause, drink in the clean air and quiet, and be lulled in the present. Distilling something from the chaos, artifice and clutter of London, details from the streets, or the interfaces where urban spaces, greenery and waterways meet, became a mindful way of dealing with the constraints of the time. But as horizons expanded, I yearned for the spacious vistas of the sea.

Information: @blurred_imo

Title of work: Doggonne
Date: January 2022

Documenting the odd and the ordinary: random observations of everyday life and objects in and around Hastings and beyond. For want of a better label, you could call it street photography.

Information: Frank Francis Website  |  @frankandal

Title of work: Montague Armstrong
Date: 2022

Montague Armstrong is Jude Montague and Matt Armstrong. They create original prints and music in their workshop on Kings Road, St Leonards on Sea. These self-portrait cyanotypes were taken early 2022 and printed by Jude Montague. Her print practice is to work experimentally and, in the moment, creating colourful one-off etchings peopled by animals and figures from mythology, memory and daydreams. She is a performer, a writer, a former archivist and media historian. She sings Latvian folk songs and her visual work is influenced by animation and poster art from Poland, Czechoslovakia and other countries in the former Soviet Union.

Her two autobiographical graphic novels are ‘Love on the Isle of Dogs’ and Breakfast in Shoreditch’ and her poetry books include ‘For the Messengers’ about footage from the Reuters television news archive where she worked for ten years.

Information: Jude Montague Website  |  @judemontague_

Title of work: Royal Vintage
Date: 2013

I work with the single unedited photograph as my medium. From the multiples of one, rarely two photos I create an abstract image. These constructed images, mounted on board and framed under glass, explore through their formal layout and content the complexity of what can and cannot be captured in a single photograph.

The ruins of Edward III’s Manor House, once an important royal house on the Thames in Bermondsey, have been excavated but kept half hidden for protection under a grassy hill. History peeps out from underneath the edges. Further along the Thames there is Hampton Court Palace with its great formal gardens. The flowers gave no sense of history and the passing of time. Royal Vintage I think, does: the constructed image creates a feeling of old-fashioned lace, a keepsake that holds the memory of something precious long since gone. The flowers photographed are not in their prime but faded.

Information: Karin Wach Website  |  @karinwach8309

Title of work : Iceland
Date: May 2022

‘I take out my camera, and life just unfolds…’

Do we appreciate life’s free things: beauty, nature, and open space? My photography intends to convey the surreal Icelandic landscape, with its stunning vistas, which are so expansive and beautiful. I elected to capture these images in black and white to strip away the distraction of colour and evoke a sense of space, isolation, and timeless simplicity in the viewer. Iceland welcomes us, but let’s remember that “nature gave, but can also take away”.

Information: Chris Coombes Website

Title of work: Hastings Jack in the Green
Date: May 2022

Hastings Jack in the Green Festival was eagerly anticipated as we had missed the event for two years due to Covid. I so enjoy photographing the cultural events that occur throughout the year in our wonderful seaside town. Another passion of mine is the incredible landscapes and seascapes in our local area. We are very fortunate to live in such a beautiful place.

Information: @john.hayward98765

Title of work: Goat Ledge pirate day
Date: Summer 2022

This image is part of an ongoing section of my work I have identified as Seascape, the majority of the images are taken on the seafront of Hastings and Saint Leonards on Sea. My passion is photographing people and events against the backdrop of the sky and sea.
I love the way the light bounces off the sea and creates this ever-changing scenic backdrop which I try and use to frame the people and the manmade objects to capture a moment of time.

I have been a working photographer for pretty much all of my adult life, mostly as a commercial food photographer. I have always tried to continue with my own projects as well and I am now at a point where I get more opportunity to take my time looking at life.
As a photography student in the seventies, I was influenced by photographers like Cartier-Bresson, Henri Lartigue, Bill Brandt, Don McCullin, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand and others of that era.

Information: Ian O’Leary Website  |  @ian0leary

Title of work: The Sea
Date: 2021

Crashing, splashing, waking the ocean ghosts
Leap and spray and dance a watery tango
Rivulets, their repeating flow cuts grooves in the metal
Ebb and flow, build and crash, spray flying

Power and beauty, broiling in the deep
Rising up and rolling to twirl and curve
Water sketches, intricate patterns in the space
Between the metal struts of the pier

Image taken on a stormy day looking under the pier from Hastings

Information: Patricia Webb Website  |  @pjwebbphoto

Title of work: After the Storm
Date: February 2022

Light is the starting point for most of my work. Subtle differences in the angle, direction and quality of light completely changes the emotional reading of a scene. The action of light describes the world around us, and the longest part of my creative journey has been spent attempting to recognise its many different voices and to respond to its innumerable atmospheres.

I strive to create images with a resonance, a narrative that extends beyond the frame. There is often a sense of the protagonist, sometimes directly by their presence in a suggested drama, but in others, they are represented by the light itself, at times in the form of a shadow, at other times by the direction or quality of the light.

“The soldier climbs the glaring stair leaving your shadow.
Tonight, this torn room sleeps
Beneath the starlight bent by you.”

Stone is not Stone: Carson McCullers

Information: Rod Morris Website  |  @roadfactoryphotos