Back in the corridor

I was back in college today, having been inviting by M, one of the lecturers, to come and hear a talk that photographer Paul Hill was giving to some of the current students - mostly members of this year's BA class, but also a few students form other years too (although many of HND2 are still in Paris). Delightfully as I was chatting with A outside the lecture theatre I saw SU walking towards me down the corridor. Great to see her again, although we didn't have enough time to really catch up - something for another day.
Paul started with something of a personal biography, explaining how he'd become a photographer and showing some of his work. He started as a journalist and when he slightly fell into photography he continued telling stories in his pictures. He talked how press photography expects hat story in a single image, while in a personal project there is more scope to develop a longer narrative, such as his White Peak Dark Peak work. That was subtitled Odyssey - A Series of Wanderings, and featured images taken within a circle of 2-mile radius around his house in the Peak District.
Paul felt it was important to do what you want to do as a photographer and to take pictures of your life. He, for example started photographing two of his passions, musicians and rock climbing. Showing us a photograph of him climbing fifty years ago he told us he had been rock climbing only yesterday - not bad for a man in his seventies!
He showed us more recent work that reflects on changes in his life in recent years. And time and time again he made that point, your life has to be the subject of your photography, reflect that story in your pictures. Seems like a good motto for blipfoto.
This is the studio corridor in the photography department, with current students gathered around the equipment store, presumably taking out kit for the weekend, or for an afternoon in one of the studios. Up on the walls, pictures from last year's exhibition. There, and in other places in the college, like the entrance to the Music Box, there are still pictures taken by my contemporaries, and by me. For a few more weeks at least, until another exhibition comes along and the frames are emptied and re-filled.
The image echoes the title of Paul's 2010 book, Corridor of Uncertainty. A book that includes a photograph of a dead butterfly on the shoulder of a grey marble statue. Bringing back to my mind the memory of the late autumn day we were in one of the studios for a feedback session on our work and a butterfly was in there, fluttering about our heads. It prompted me to write this poem when I got home that day.

The Butterfly in the Studio

On wings as fragile as creative thoughts,
It birls and pirouettes
Throughout the white bright room.
I can't alone have wondered
From where it might have come.
A caterpillar stowaway
Hiding in some flowery prop?
But brought to life too soon, too late
By so many tungsten lamps.
Like our ideas,
It fluttered round the room,
Almost landing
Then soaring to the ceiling
Until, our presentations done,
We all trooped out
And left it there,
To dance a waltz of summer
Until the lights went out.


And I almost forgot, had a good chat afterwards with M about my Paris project - he was very encouraging and also gave me a few other ideas on things I could do with it.