I am going to talk a little bit about drawing today. I will not go back to the dim and distant past when my hand did exactly what I asked it to do. The one thing I really enjoyed at art college was life drawing classes. In my third and fourth year I managed to nestle my way into while it wasn't part of the curriculum for illustration (imagine that!). However, after about the year 2000 the fibromyalgic problems that stem from my spinal condition caught up with me and I stopped drawing and painting, turning to collaging instead. I drew occasionally, but some movements that require fine motor skills and muscular stamina were very difficult for me.
In Finland, the members of the art society I belonged to got together about three times to do life drawing. It was cheap and our model during the two latter sessions was adventurous and curvy. That makes a difference indeed!
Vivi-Mari Carpelan: "Reclining Nude", 2006
Twice we were guided by the artist Julius Mattas who lives in Australia during the winter. His point of view was to try and help people loosen up and practice their drawing in an unconventional way. The idea was not to worry about the lines being in the right place, but to let it flow freely why you kept your eyes on the model more often than on your paper. It was more a question of feeling the shapes than to rigorously imitate them. What you come up with is often full of life and surprisingly, more indicative of shape and movement than a conventional drawing might have been.
Vivi-Mari Carpelan "Nude free style 1 min" 2006
Vivi-Mari Carpelan: "Nude free style 1 min" 2008
It's a great shame this didn't go on on a regular basis, especially as it was easier for me to produce these kinds of drawings without straining my hand and shoulder muscles too much. There are no cheap classes in this area, so Martin and I really should be practising on each other.
In the last session Mattas had us draw without looking at the paper at all....
Vivi-Mari Carpelan: "Nude Without Looking At the Paper" 2006
I have decided to try and draw the figure of my new mixed media collage, using a photo as a basis. I hope that the scale will make a difference to my ability (it's going to be fairly big, as opposed to most figures I drew in the past).
The other day I decided I really want to produce a drawing of Martin's face. I have started the process by drawing this rather stiff first study. Apart from the few life drawings I haven't done any drawing at all in over 11 years. The first one is bound to be stiff. I also have to take my time studying all the details of his expressive face. Well, this time it was quite dark and Martin got very sleepy... it wasn't easy to try and catch the intensity of the eyes which will be the main focus of my final drawing. To my annoyance I realized it was extremely difficult to draw this little sketch on the couch without varyfocals, as I cannot see both far and close with the glasses I have. I have opted to have separate reading glasses but will try and use my old varyfocals for this sort of purpose. The alternative is to set up a big sheet on an easel but then I am not sure how detailed the study would be as I have nowhere to lean my arms. Oh well, just have to keep working at it. The result wasn't great by any standards though one can spot some resemblance...
Vivi-Mari Carpelan: "First study of Martin 270811"
Normally you tend to oscillate between looking at detail and looking at the whole (unless you're a beginner in which case you often stare at the details only and miss their interrelationship and relationship to the paper and the whole). I think being more aware of the whole is a better starting point, then the rest follows, but it's not easy and it takes some loosening up. The whole is bigger than the sum of its details...
People often ask you which artists have influenced your art. I always used to say nobody. I felt that my art came from myself 100 %. Back in the early days there weren't that many books and exhibitions to get impressions from anyway. But there are obviously artists who I a special feel kinship with, historical characters being among others Giorgio De Chrico, Frida Kahlo, and Gustav Klimt. I always thought it interesting that they are all Cancerians. While I'm not overly familiar with starsigns and all that, nevertheless, this made me very curious about the Cancerian character. Not least as I am one too, and I have always investigated into myself. I discovered that authors I liked when still reading fiction (Hermann Hesse in particular) were Cancerian too, and that people I got on with especially well were Cancerian... It seemed to me there was something that all these people understood that no one else seemed to be able to express. Something very deep about the mystery of life and our emotions in the grand scheme of things. Something very sensuous, warm, comforting and utterly compelling. They are maternal and caring even when they don't have children of their own. Knowing that I am one of them is a cosy experience. And I should probably add that the concerns of other star signs just don't seem to resonate with me quite so much!
Giorgio De Chirico: The Tower, 1913
There is a sense of warmth and protection
which is unprecedented -
and may I venture to say, very Cancerian!
Giorgio De Chirico: The Enigma of the Arrival and the Afternoon, 1911/12
Giorgio De Chirico: The Tower, 1913 May I venture to say... that only a Cancerian is able to make shadows like this seem warm and comforting... It's the kind of city I would like to live in... Protective and silent.
I was thinking of my recent interest in Tracey Emin's art and why it made an impact on me. It suddenly struck me, that only a Cancerian could make that kind of art. I had to go and find out - well, sure enough, she is one too! Is this peculiar or what?? In her art, there is a subjectivity, warmth and a connection between the various elements of life and living that makes sense to me on a deeper level. My explorations into this sphere restored my belief in contemporary and unconventional art. It's true that although I've been interested in contemporary art and thoroughly enjoy documentaries about artists, I haven't dug very deep since the late 1980s.
Gustav Klimt (caption later)
Gustav Klimt (caption later) Sensuality - a very Cancerian quality
Part of my excitement was probably seeing patterns that made sense to me. It reminds me of other times in my life when I have become engrossed in a particular subject that "just made sense". Virginia Woolf's stream of consciousness writing (compare this with Tracye Emin's streams of words) when I was in second grade, or the symbolism of the egg in primordial myths as they explain oneness versus dualism when I was at art college in France (and totally screwed up my chances because of a sudden fascination with academic research). On a more esoteric level, there were the explorations into the cause and effect of karma and the logic of reincarnation, explorations into the human energy system and how it relates to the rest of reality, Ken Wilber's carefully patterned theories about the evolution of consciousness, and my thesis at Uni on creativity and the inner patterns connected to it. What all these things have in common is the exploration of deep seated patterns that define reality. This moves and excites me in a way that nothing else does!
The last ten years has been a time of emotional chaos; of experiences all emotions and learning to understand them as well as deal with them. I have been burn out many times, and my attention span has gotten worse. A couple of years ago I started to want to read non-fiction again but it's slow and arduous. Yet I feel compelled to nourish my brain so that I can generate new and stimulating thoughts... I just don't want to give in to the condition.
Vivi-Mari Carpelan: "The Past Comes Crumbling Down", 2008
The dark and mysterious, or...
Vivi-Mari Carpelan: "My Secret Garden", copyright 1997 The light and mysterious...
So as usual, after a time of low and even depression, something has come together in my subconscious mind and I feel something beckoning me in a certain direction. I finally started on a piece of art that I have been thinking about for months. We could really use some money and I would be happy to sell some art. But I cannot bring myself to thinking in commercial terms. I have to follow my heart. And in spite of some misgivings, I can't stop thinking that I need to bring out the issue of chronic illness more poignantly. I've been debating how to go about it in an elegant way. Perhaps Tracey Emin and her self-disclosure has helped me feel more determined about what I probably ought to do. Only time will show what the exact impact has been. Strangely, this time I can honestly say that I feel influenced by another artist though exactly in what way is not clear to me yet.
This is the starting point of my new work. The sheet is bigger than usual, it's A1. For the past ten years I used to do small work because of many reasons: 1) I could scan them and get a good print without much trouble. 2) I could only afford buying small frames from Ikea 3) I didn't have anyone to help me so when I needed to take artwork to an exhibition it had to be managable. There was a drawback, however, which is that I wasn't able to draw much myself. My fine motoric skills have degenerated over the years. I have now decided to go for bigger images as Martin can help me with the practical issues. I want them to have more impact on the audience. I also hope that I can integrate more drawing into the images.
Vivi-Mari Carpelan: "Claude" 1993
I will be attempting to draw the figure of myself as seen on the print-out on the table. There will be a lot of copyright free men in the picture as well, so I need to do a lot of scanning. This is not easy to do since my old scanner is not compatible with my new PC, so I have to do it through Martin's tablet PC which he needs for drawing. He's getting on with his exciting illustration project for a book...
Martin Herbert - Character Study for a Book Project,
copyright 2011
Read my blogpost about Frida Kahlo as we impersonated the couple here.
Read my extensive analysis of Tracey Emin's work here.
On August 15 we arrived at The Royal Academy of Art in London where Martin was due for an interview as he is participating in the competition "Great Britons". The winner will be decorating twelve of the British Airways aircrafts for the Olympics in London in 2012.
Only ten people were short listed, by all accounts friendly and intelligent artists. We waited some time together in the restaurant before the contestants were taken to a waiting room and I went out and walked around the neighborhood. I felt quite privileged to experience a significant enough event in the art world at a prestigious institution in London.
Martin was well prepared and it all seemed to have gone well. Among others, he shook hands with the eminent artist Tracey Emin. I am not allowed to disclose more about all this before the winner has been chosen and the results publicized.
Hopeful!
We were able to see the Royal Academy of Art summer exhibition that I wrote a previous blog entry about, and so we got to see quite the cross section of what people create these days. There were a lot of members of the Royal Academy (who have distinguished themselves artistically speaking) and their work sold for thousands - prices around £ 30.000 weren't unusual! These artists also displayed up to five pieces, which to me seemed quite excessive and I believe it's also considered a bit selfish. Some of it wasn't really any good at all, for instance some sloppy drawings of people dancing... By the look of it, it's not impossible to get in as an outsider, and I feel I would like to try this since most pieces of art actually sold! The good thing about seeing the exhibition on it's last day was that we got to see this.
Read all about my impressions of Tracey Emin's art in my previous blog post!
Vivi-Mari Carpelan copyright 2011 I am glad to be in a country where art abounds... though I worry about the harsh competition.
"How it Feels", 1996 -
Still from an interview with Tracey Enim about her unsuccesful abortion
If you're a student and looking for an article on Tracey Emin, please note that the article that follows is copyrighted and may not be used in any way without my consent or proper reference to me as the author.
Tracey Emin (born 1963) is one of the world's most famous female artists. She has also succeeded in creating a fortune making self-exposing art. In the following I will be talking about her work and how it affects me as an a woman and an artist as she has helped me think about what I do. We saw her on internet television several times in recent months, probably because the Hayward Gallery in London was showing a retrospective exhibition of her work. We both had a strange feeling that we would have something to do with her in the near future. That was before we knew about the competition and that Martin would go for it. Now we are waiting with bated breaths for the results!
The day after the interview was spent on the well-curated exhibition "Love is What You Want," which includes over 20 years of Tracey Emin's artistic production. The title obviously points to the very thing we all want most of all, the one thing that means something. It was a great opportunity to see why she has become famous and what she is all about. A lot of people have prejudices about her talent and are unable to understand why she has become famous. I was however very curious about her and grateful of this opportunity.
"Since the early 1990s, Emin (b.1963) has used her own life as the starting point for her art, exposing the most harrowing and intimate details of her personal history. Sometimes confrontational or sexually provocative, her work resonates with the 'personal political' legacy of feminist art while at the same time speaking to relationships in general. Disarmingly frank and yet often profoundly private, much of Emin's art - as this show makes clear - is also animated by her playful and ironic wit." (From the description at The Hayward Gallery website)
The works quite often tend to work better as part of a whole than on their own. The works that were exhibited at The Royal Academy's summer exhibition were not particularly engaging when they were detached from a larger context. Tracey's life is her art and probably vice versa. Her extreme self-disclosure has made her a modern icon - I would say that this kind of confessional art is a sign of the times. Unfortunately, but also typically, there are many who know of her distinctive appearances and the media profile of a superstar without knowing much about her art.
Listen to this radio show about Tracey Emin's work.
The interesting thing about her work is that she provides you with all this
intimate detail, and it makes you feel that you know her really well.
Yet it's an illusion, because the more you know the more you see the gaps.
This poses interesting questions about the balance between
the private and the public self and how authentic we can ever be in our self-disclosure. Some things simply must remain hidden. Because of all this, I feel compelled to talk about her using her first name, which you wouldn't normally do when you write an article.
Tracey's art originates in various traumatic events in her life. This applies particularly to a rape when she was 13 and a difficult abortion later in life. She has lived a fairly chaotic life characterized by both roughness and vulnerability, and this is what characterizes her work. Allegedly, one day in 1998 she woke up and pondered the physical chaos that surrounded her after weeks of alcoholic living. She realized that she needed to shape up, but also that her bed and all that surrounded it (including condoms and bloody tampons) was more art than anything she had ever created by hand. "My Bed" thus became the work of art that made her famous. This was a seminal piece of art (the other one was the tent "Everyone I ever slept with", an earlier piece that burnt down), and it helped change the way people see art.
"My Bed" 1998 (installation)
Abortion is something she long processed of her art in the form of handwritten diary text, memorabilia and interviews. By sharing the most intimate details of her own life, she has fashioned an art that is both quite femininist, self-enhanced and cheeky, yet also self-doubting, vulnerable and sincere, and often a quest for a female identity. By feminist I mean the desire to assert the right of women to be who they are and standing for non-patriarchal values, as well as having a fanny! Obviously we cannot be sure exactly how honest she really is. Eg spelling errors may not always be completely genuine but could well be deliberate efforts to reproduce earlier and more spontaneous problems with spelling. On the other hand, they give rise to new associations (masturbates becomes masterbate, pity it was not master-bait!). However without them, the art would not seem quite so rough and basic. As she originally wrote down the messages in this form, the charm presumably lies in not correcting this expression, even when the text is labouriously applied to a blanket.
Tracey Emin: 'I Know I Know I Know "(neon)
- a more sophisticated version of her
text-based art in which the middle sentence is crossed out as sentences in a diary or a letter.
The neon lights are reminiscent of a form of self-disclosure that is typical of our time and all reality shows:
Often, people's innermost feelings are out in the open,
and the basis for sensationalism, the worship of individuals, self-assertion, PR of the individual, and
commercialism,
but how genuine and honest is this whole charade? On the other hand, it depends a lot on where the word originally came from.
As you follow her artistic process all the way up into middle-age there is no doubt that she attempts to be authentic, and that she is also a truly humane person. She is just as solipsistic and self-absorbed, and occasionally but not often somewhat self-pitying, as people in general are. This is not something you can express artistically without a high degree of directness and self-disclosure. She is tough but not hard-boiled - she is intelligent enough to express who she is with humour, some irony and distance, but sufficiently vulnerable not to seem calculated. You get the feeling that she is strong enough to not go under (she is definitely the surviving type) but possibly a little too weak to stop dwelling on traumas from the past. What a womanly thing this is though, dwelling and processing! I'm glad she supports this innate trait which men often scorn at. Though in all honesty I get the impression that this stage as she is approaching 50 is now over, and many of the newer works of art feel a bit empty in comparison with the bleeding wounds she screams out in her previous art. But she\s someone you cannot easily pinpoint and despite my curiosity, I feel a bit uncomfortable even trying to!
Tracey Emin: "It Always Hurts", 2005 (patchwork) There is something quite pristine, even virginal about this piece. This is probably due to the white and off white tones, which create a rather strange impression in opposition with the explicit sexual nature of the embroidery. It's as if saying, it's still okay, all this sexual violence is just part of life, and you sense that it hasn't turned Tracey into a bitter man hating person. Maybe it's even saying, all this is not so important any more.
Tracey Emin's art makes a big impression on me because there are similarities between us in the obsessive documenting of feelings and experiences in diary form, and the desire to disclose ourselves completely in order to create an honest and many faceted communication with other people. Her quilts (note that she is in a paradoxical way dealing with a traditional feminine craft, perhaps as part of an effort to strengthen her female identity - this seems to contribute to a tension between opposing drives in her life) is a kind of collage. What is different from my art and writing is that she is so raw and in the absence of a sophisticated expression. Or wait... she is unpretentious, but is she actually lacking in sophistication..? She is much tougher than I could ever be. Despite the fact that we both like to talk about trauma, there is a big difference in the way we talk about them. I can not ignore my own inner yearning for order, harmony and a sophisticated lifestyle and a certain conditioning to conforming to many of the middle class values that pervade society. Don't get me wrong, I loathe mediocrity, but I also cannot help coming from a country with much less conflict between social classes, and I feel no need to disregard the cultural background I grew up with and have no reason to reject what was in fact quite good in a cultural sense - rebellion and conflict is a source of a lot of contemporary British art. Tracey on the other hand appears to use her (presumably) simple background and chaotic lifestyle to communicate a modern and urban woman's troubled life experience. Yet there is a femininity about her that is quite compelling, In spite of different backgrounds, our aim is not dissimilar. In the end we take what is good and useful and reject the rest, I guess.
Tracey Emin: "Mad Tracey From Margate - Everyone's Been There", 1997 (patchwork)
A stream of consciousness, like a diary - Tracey Emin has mastered the art of integrating words into her art, and she plays with words and narratives, often with a great sense of wit in the true British tradition of witticism, irony and humour!
It is interesting that many of her quilts are really very beautiful and in using neon lights in fact utilizing a modern and rather sophisticated medium. I would therefore say that as a woman she is still drawn towards a certain sophistication or aesthetic orderliness. It is as if she hovered on the borders of the overly arranged and corrected without quite exceeding them. It raises questions about where the line of the brutal and crude really is and how you define beauty and the "civilized and orderly." In art, one can talk about being a dry academic or more original, spontaneous and unaffected by trends. To lean towards the less academic way in spite of an arts education and the life in a big city is unusual and probably Tracey's trump-card. By and large, Tracey Emin's art is very subjective, to the point, and in the absence of any very obviuos spiritual, social or political overtones. Although she is intelligent and wonderfully sardonic I do not know if deeper thinking about the meaning of life and the experiences of life from a broader perspective is somewhere in the background. Yet the more I know her and her art, the more I suspect that there is thought there that is not quite so obvious or in your face (she did in fact study philosophy for a while and is obviously an intelligent and researching person). And of course, it's easy to miss the obvious which is that her work is very much of our times, and is therefore a very powerful commentary on many contemporary issues, not least how women fit into modern society What I find so stimulating is that you discover more layers the more you contemplate all of this. And this is also not an elitist form of art, because Tracye's art is her and her life, and it is very straightforward.
Tracey Emin: Harder and Better, 2007 (patchwork)
The text is reminiscent of her handwritten letters,
unfortunately pictures of them are not available
but they do form an important part of her work
and there was plenty to read, often very witty. You might ask yourself, whether she herself considers her drawings as valid as the embroidery, given that it takes more time to construct the latter.
It feels like I might have something to learn from Tracey's immediacy - or perhaps she can give me more strength to expose my sore points. I have to think about it some more, perhaps it becomes clearer with time. I believe it is a sign of development and maturity that you become more reclusive over the years. I always wanted to show everything, in order to support a collective process towards more openness between people. However, there is a lot of material I have not yet published. To share in an honest way is a way of supporting humanism. At the time being, there is a seemingly unsolvable inner conflict between my desire to be open and share, and a painful fear of showing my vulnerability. Perhaps it is really about finding new ways of expressing what I want to bring out into the world. Tracey Emin really entered my sphere of interests at exactly the right time, as I have recently been pondering my artistic message and how it could be made more poignant and come across as unpretentious. Self´-disclosure must be unconditional to be true. Tracey has reinforced that in me.
Tracey Emin: "I do Not Expect", 2002 (patchwork) I could have said these exact words (the first ones) myself.
Finally, I must say that perhaps it is typical that Tracey did not want to be a mother but has a fondness for cats. In this regard, there is also another similarity between us. Her strength lies in finding other outlets for creativity than the typical conception of children and in finding a different, fertile way of existing as a woman in society. Yet I wonder how far she can get without being nourished by deep emotional wounds. It looks like a typical example of how one must suffer for one's art. Of course I don't mean that art must be this way, but I often doubt the value of art that is not born out of struggle to survive physically and mentally.
Tracey Emin: "Something's Wrong", 2002 (patchwork)
Ironically, it's Tracey's vagina (being at the centre of her art) that has brought her riches,
despite never having brought forth life - a source of inner conflict, according to herself. She is interested in what it means to give life, and how most of us need something small and cute to take care of, for various reasons.
The type of art Tracey represents feels pressing and refreshing, and it concerns me. I think she is a brave and tough personality who has steadfastly held onto her artistic ambitions. There is something for everyone yet her life's work forms a coherent whole. Above all, apart from changing the way we understand art, she has helped abolish taboos and promote greater openness - when you see her art, you can only laugh at that it still considered bad taste to display naked breasts in art here in Wales. Not forgetting that she is an inspiration because she has managed to support herself through the making of unconventional art - and though she was entrepreneurial, I don't feel that she has done all this in order to become rich. I feel like an eager art history student all over again, but with the maturity of middle-age to support my explorations. Tracey Emin has without any doubt deserved her place in art history.
The above are my own thoughts. Because of financial worries I did not think to buy the exhibition catalog, but we ordered it, and I will surely have more to say when I have ploughed through it. Read more about what critics think about the exhibition here and here . I wrote earlier about Tracey in my posts about Frida Kahlo. Read her thoughts on the similarities between her and Frida here. It is not surprising that there are similarities between all of us.
Tracey Emin: "Cat Watching", 2006 - cat watches while Tracey is masturbating. The exhibition audience was encouraged to write comments on the works of art. I wrote "The Cat Knows". It is always very amusing when the cats watch you go about your human pursuits...
Watch this video on what Tracey thinks about the meaning of art today and her encouraging words for the contestants of the Great Britons competition:
Listen to Tracey explaining the meaning of art and encouraging the participants of the Great Britons contest.
Note that she is speaking of art as a replacement of traditional religion
and museums and galleries as places of contemplation on the meaning of existence.
I find this very interesting as it is something I have recently been pondering myself.
I will come back to this later.
Vivi-Mari Carpelan: "Purification", 1997
Words are important to me, but I am aware of the fallacy of using them in a deliberate way as part of the artwork. Tracey can pull it off - not many can. I mainly stick to subtle hints and to underlying the importance of the names I give my work (as they complement the piece, and I would never call a piece "nameless"). They are often inspired, or at least they used to be (the above are not the most typical examples though), and even back in Finland they used to come to me in English. Martin wants to use text in his own art, something which echoes a certain modern attitude towards language.
TODAY I WILL TALK ABOUT AN EXTENSIVE PHOTO EXHIBITION, A COOL CAFE IN INDUSTRIAL STYLE, AND A LITTLE ABOUT THE ART OF HANGING ART!
Shrewsbury is a town with a large number of old half-timbered houses on the English side (we live in Wales, not England!). Martin made me aware of an exhibition opportunity during a photo month in August, and we chose two of my earlier abstract works. Had I waited a little longer maybe I had chosen some newer work instead, but I was in the midst of editing a new batch of abstract works and we also believed that the simpler and more colorful compositions would do better in a crowded cafe environment.
The cafe is relatively new and strives to support artistic activity. It is decorated in the industrial style that is all the rage right now. Personally, I think it is charming with big worn metal lamps in steampunk style, glasses from an old school and picture hangers that have been a series of hooks in an old school in their former life.
Martin, me and one of our photographer friends Richard Booth went to the private view, but we were unfortunately a bit late because I had trouble getting a simple brochure made on time. It was something I just began thinking about ... nothing serious yet.
Chaos reigned in the tiny space when we arrived. 50 photographers were represented with 80 images so the jury had a lot of work to do (newspaper article here). There was much to absorb.
There is perhaps some sort of policy in the cafes in the UK that you can not get anything to eat during the openings. This time all you got was a small glass of wine, but there was not anything other than drinks and bags of potato chips to buy. In the cafe in our town, also meant to serve as an art venue, the organizer stands for food and beverage, which the cafe prepare (it gets expensive!). I guess there was no money for something to eat here in Shrewsbury (it cost only 6 pounds to participate).
I thought maybe the suspension was slightly unprofessional ... Because it is a contest the pictures had no name that could possibly affect the audience, and perhaps this is also why everything was hung pell-mell. Sometimes I perceived a half-hearted idea behind the suspension but as someone who has acted as curator for myself and for group shows, I must say that it could have been better. To think in terms of whole, complementing elements and rhythm isnot so easy. The group of photos with orange details behind the orange lights that were a distance away probably worked the best (and was presumably hung first!).
Worst for me was of course that my own pictures, which I chose specifically so that they would stand out in the crowd, were placed in a dark corner on the ground floor. The orange tube under the pictures is also very distracting. Perhaps the idea was that large color pictures would do better than the small black and white photos? Alas! It must have been at the end where the organizers have already been working for 17 hours, surely they were too tired to think clearly.
This image has no light and reflections from other lights
means that you can not see what it represents. You have to climb on the
couch to see anything - who would do that! The orange tube bothers me
tremendously because it interferes with my soft and thoughtful compositions
with its sharp aggressive presence.
The photos were meant to complement each other,
but were hung with someone else's image in between.
What's the idea behind this?
You can after all see that my pieces are made by the same person.
They could at least have been in completely different places. Perhaps there was some thought behind the idea of putting my pictures in orange above an orange tube ... In this case, the tube becomes very domineering.
"The Mystery of Calculation", 2007 - note the diagrams!
"Magic of Curves", 2008
On the whole, we were not quite so impressed by the artistic level of the photographs (the idea was also that aspiring photographers would get a chance to show their works). In retrospect, I could have presented almost anything, and now feel that the quality of the old Digital photos don't quite make it when they are being enlarged. It's inspiring to see what others do. I'm obviously a little disappointed that my pictures did not stand out at all, but that's life!
It was nice that there was a group photo of the photographers! I got this photo from Richard Foot, who organized the exhibition and events during the month photo.
