Nous croyens en l’Europe (We believe in Europe) are illustrations for a tract published by Cocteau in 1961. I see this image as Liberty riding a goat, a reference to Freemasonry and maybe to Cassius Coolidge’s images of Dogs Playing Poker (1894).

Jean Cocteau at Hôtel Napoléon, Menton-Garavan

Permanent display in one of the hotels in Menton-Garavan of works of writer, film director and artist Jean Cocteau (1889-1963); he is maybe best known in England for the title of his novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929). Cocteau developed his own visual style at the height of the Art Deco period, worked with Pablo Picasso, was supported by Henri Matisse, is believed to have worked with Jean Genet on the silent film Un chant d’amour (1950) as film editor (the film was banned by the censors on account of its homosexual content), wrote a hit one act drama/monologue for his unlikely friend Edith Piaf and enjoyed a scandalous life as a homosexual whilst this was illegal in France. He was Chair of the jury of the Cannes Film Festivals of 1953 and 1954. Jean Cocteau wrote and directed his last film Le Testament d’Orphée (1960) with financial support from François Truffaut.

Read more: Nous croyens en l’Europe - Jean Cocteau at Hôtel Napoléon, Menton-Garavan

Good to meet some photographers and friends that I haven’t met for several years, we’re all getting used to group meetings face-to-face again. Couple of dozen turnout for the first meet of London GPN of 2024, now back in Kennington. I do like the Camera Club’s space there, I find the juxtaposition of steel and painted brick, circles and rectangles is visually stimulating. Shame I had to leave before the photo show as I for a dawn flight the next morning.

The stunning thing with this outdoor exhibition of double portraits is the gap between the curators’ rhetoric and the relative indifference of the public passing these large prints in the square outside Marseille Hotel de Ville and the Vieux Port.

It would be foolish to dismiss any photography initiative in the land of Cartier-Bresson and not far from the photography college at Arles so I was people-watching, looking to see which (if any) of the images exhibited by The Anonymous Project lived up to the rhetoric. We are told these images were found and purchased as an archive with very little information as to provenance, names etc. Display of these images is the work of The Anonymous Project so what we are seeing is a double selection, by both the photographer(s) - names unknown - and then the curators.

Read more: The Anonymous Project - Photo Marseille Festival 2022

Eden Valley Artistic Network (EVAN) Gallery and Studios, Penrith, Cumbria

 A fascinating chat with Ruth Wharton at her exhibition in EVAN Gallery and Studios, it’s always good to discuss outside one’s own genre. She’s a licensed handler of explosives precursors and poisons (EPP), which means she can handle the materials required for etchings, such as Nitric Acid. Her exhibition features a number of etching techniques: aquatint, photogravure as well as direct etching, ie scratching the plate. Her results are intriguingly different to much of the art which you see around at galleries. To my eye, Ruth Wharton’s images are more intense and maybe more engaging. There is also a slight 3D effect from the thickness of the ink layer on the paper, particularly noticeable with the small size of the etchings she’s exhibiting. My photo shows only one of her many displays; Ruth’s exhibition takes the whole of Gallery 4A, with the ceramics of Rebecca Callis. As well as etchings, Ruth Wharton is also showing a couple of panels of photographs, nicely catching the personalities of the people she features, printed to black and white and mostly quite small prints.

More: Art in Penrith - EVAN Gallery and Studios