GENERAL INFLUENCES

R S Thomas (Welsh Poet) - 'Let the mind take its photograph of the bright scene, something to warm the heart against the long cold.' AND 'Learn the thinness of the window and how the mind cuts itself if it goes through.' 

Constantin Brancusi's words - 'Simplicity is not an end in art, but we arrive at simplicity in spite of ourselves, in approaching the real sense of things.  Simplicity is complexity itself, and one has to be nourished by its essence in order to understand its value.'

Carl Zigrosser's words on the work of Käthe Kollwitz - 'To know the prints of this master is to feel the heart-beats and sense of aspirations of the common people.  Her compassion for their tragedies and sufferings overflowed the boundaries of just a single print.'   

Kollwitz's memorial sculptures of grieving parents. Their son Peter was killed at the beginning of the war and these remarkable sculptures were made in memorial to him but have since taken on universal appeal and have come to symbolise the fallen soldiers of a lost generation in WWI. They are now sited at the Vladslo German War Cemetery in Belgium with the eyes on the father-figure gazing on the stone directly in front of him, on which Kollwitz's son's name is engraved.

Georges Rouault - 'Miserere and Guerre' - a series of prints produced as a social commentary on the hardships of war and the hope for redemption.  Started in 1912 and completed in 1948.

Jacques Maritain on the work of Georges Rouault - 'For tenderness and pity, and a longing for harmony, calm and serenity are the true heart of Rouault.'

Ernest Hello on the work of George Rouault - 'Beauty is the form that love gives to things.  How could ugliness fail to spoil the forms of a world which love seemed to have deserted.'  

The music of Richard Strauss. Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) and Vier Letze Lieder - the last song in particular being the most beautiful piece of music ever written (to my mind!). Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and George Szell's recording.

The literature from the Blasket Islanders, see Southern Ireland - The Blasket Islands.

Of great importance - the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

-------------------------

PHOTOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES

Alvin Langdon Coburn and the Pictorialists

Julia Margaret Cameron

Bill Brandt

Fay Godwin's early landscape work

John Blakemore's black and white work of tulips - flowers as gracefully beautiful when dying as when in full bloom.  Blakemore believes that there should be no 'blacks' in photographic prints, only 'living darkness.'

---------------------------

In retirement, I'm focusing on Memory, Images and Texts bringing the three together in recording family backgrounds through articles and books with a focus on WWI and loss. To date, all writings have been self-published.

The first draft of The Metronome of Grief - a Family in WWI is close to completion and I'm hoping to get it published. The writing centres on my paternal grandparents who married in June 1914, just weeks before the outbreak of war. My grandfather Major Harold Kinder Griffith served with Queen Victoria’s Rifles (Territorials) as a surgeon with the Royal Army Medical Corps.  To date, the names of ten serving family members who lost their lives have been identified, in addition to a cousin and her husband who were killed when HMS Persia was torpedoed.  The identity of five serving members who survived the war are also featured. The book is  well-illustrated with photographs of these family members, extracts from family letters, photographs of awarded medals, burial sites, maps and any imagery sourced that relates to their lives. The writing is laid out in chronological order and also covers munitions’ factories, aspects of the postal system to and from the troops, the Spanish ‘Flu and military actions in the context of those featured.  It will conclude with a chapter on the CWGC and grief.

I currently run a local group on Writing your Family History and another which I co-run on Family History Research. I'm also a member of a Creative Writing Group (Non-Fiction).

---------------------------

PHOTOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND

1998-2016. Lecturer in Further and Higher Education - Arts University Plymouth, with emphasis on analogue black and white processing and printing, together with specialist darkroom practices, and student research practices.

Emphasis also on student pastoral care, risk assessments and assessments.

Prior to 1972, worked for provincial fine art auctioneers with primary interest being 20th century art, specifically Expressionism.

Aged about ten, I was given my first camera - a Brownie which really sparked my interest in photography, in fact following my father and his mother whose interests in black and white imagery and early cinema were deeply rooted.

---------------------------

CAREER HISTORY

Dec 1998 – 2016                   Plymouth College of Art and Design

                                                Photography Lecturer FE/HE 

July 2000                              Bethlem Royal Hospital, London    

                                             Adolescent Residential Psychiatric Unit

                                             One week's Photography Workshop

Jan – Dec 1999                     Devon Social Services

                                             One-to-one photography workshops with young people

Jan – March 1999                  Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery in conjunction with Morley Community Centre, Plymstock

                                                Photography project involving school children in the documentation of Plymstock.

  Exhibition – Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, Summer 1999

QUALIFICATIONS

1994 – 1995                          Plymouth College of Art

                                               BA (Hons) Photo Media 

 Professional Qualifiying Examination (PQE) Awarded by the British Institute of Professional Photographers (BIPP)

1992 – 1994                         Plymouth College of Art

                                               HND Photography.  

1990 – 1992                         Plymouth College of Art

                                               BTEC ND Design (Photography)

PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITIONS

March 1999 – October 1999      Rumour, Totnes

                                             General Portraiture

June 1999 – July 1999           The Gallery, Torbay Hospital

                                             Portraiture

October 1998 – March 1999      Rumour, Totnes

                                                      Children and Teenagers                                            

October – November 1994     Viewpoint Gallery, Plymouth College of Art

                                             People of Totnes

September – October 1994    Seymour Gallery, Totnes

                                             People of Totnes

March 1994                          Willow Restaurant and Birdwood House, Totnes

                                             Portraits to celebrate International Women’s Week

August 1993                         Birdwood House, Totnes

        People of Totnes

July – August 1993                Otterton Mill, Otterton, East Devon

                                             General Portraiture

WORK EXHIBITED               (Collective Exhibitions – various photographers)

                                             Association Gallery, Domingo Street, London

                                             Plymouth Arts Centre

                                             Exeter Arts Centre

                                                     The Trerise Gallery, Plymouth Hoe (2013) 

Thanks to Jamila Hanan for her expert guidance and patience in helping me to build this website.