Photoworks: Ashby in Abruzzo

This has been a busy week! On Sunday Celia Davies from Photoworks arrived and it was great to spend the day with Celia on Monday, going over the project and discussing the work. Incredibly helpful and illuminating.

On Tuesday we waved her off to the Biennale in Venice while major preparations were taking place for the launch of the book 'Ashby in Abruzzo' and for the celebrations of Abruzzian culture prior to the donation of the images to the Abruzzo community by the BSR. This is because since the recent earthquake at L'Aquila so much was destroyed.

Valerie and her team in the Library have been working for quite some time to prepare the launch and it turned into a really splendid event and magical evening..

We were all invited too and were requested to dress appropriately, Peter, Raphael and Michael did us all proud....

I was intrigued with all the preparations beforehand - especially the deep fat frier set up outside my studio...

Valerie made a splendid exhibition of some of the Ashby images along with a couple of his photograph albums and his field camera

I really like the movement of the people in his photographs...

There followed a presentation from various dignitaries in the lecture theatre including Christopher

all in Italian - and I found that I can understand now much more than I realised (just wish I could speak it better..)

Then there was some music from Abbruzzo

with amazing singing from Rosaria Angotti and fantastic piano accompaniment from Emanuela Longo.

With that, everyone went up to the cortile for the most amazing buffet

I love the way they presented everything

I couldn't get close to the savouries - but no-one was around the sweetie section and it all looked so pretty

You can imagine how lovely it was to be mingling in the warm evening with the sound of the fountain playing and as the sun went down the magic of candlelight.

I suddenly found myself in a ghostly conversation with Thomas Ashby (my exposures had to be long ones because of the time of day) causing the same movement of people in my pictures, an echo back to his images, all that time ago..

Click on these below and you will see..