Avril has provided some memories and details of the Herts Foto Forum’s early days.
I have discovered considerable information about exhibitions going back to 2001, not pictures though as it was really predigital from our point of view. I have information and names of members going over all the years but again no pictures.
I have the write up of the large exhibition we had at the St Albans Museum in London Road when we worked with Beaumont School ‘A’ level students which was a great success. I have records of some of the past exhibition posters.
Helen Brown took over as the organiser very early on, I believe she was the second, and if I remember correctly Michael de Ruyter Schatt followed and then Peter Brierley followed by Neville Austin. Both Michael and Peter have died and I doubt anyone will have their work.
Kate has been a member for quite a long time as has Dawn. Mary, Dawn, Helen, Rosemary and Bunshri were at college together at the same time as myself. Dawn joined UofH after I left. Bobbie Rogers was a member of HFF almost until her death and was also at college with us.
Avril wrote this appreciation of Helen Brown in 2011 and sent the images to go with it.
Helen’s creativity was beyond question of an extraordinarily high standard. Those of us who worked with her and knew her work can vouch for it.
Illustrated here you will find a selection of Helen’s work taken over the years and it is possible to see the continuing advance of her technique and imagination.
Her botanical studies are superb and could hardly be bettered. Helen’s knowledge of the subject, the arrangement of the plants and their grace, all contributed to the elegance of the image and then the hand colouring, at which Helen was a master, really raised the standard another notch.
Helen’s early pictures of people have also captured the moment. Helen managed to avoid having too much of anything in her pictures, and that went for people as well, not too many of them.
I don’t think there was a genre that Helen did not manage to cover successfully, and her main pleasure was the doing of it, not the prestige, not publishing and not exhibiting, just doing it, enjoying the act of using the camera, printing, thinking about the paper she would use to best express what was wanted from the image.
She always wanted to experiment and to push herself to the furthest limits.
Another extension of her photographic work are her books, beautifully bound, ideas well thought out and highly imaginative. Exquisite work to be treasured. Helen not only bound her own books she also restored books and brought them back to life, some were printed books and others were old photographic albums with hand decorated pages which she enhanced with her own pictures.
Life is short but Art is long and her work will remain to remind us of her sterling qualities.
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Herts Foto Forum 