Big week for images & memories in Frome

This week saw the launch of our town's first Festival of Photography: Photo Frome,  Nine venues will be showing, free, exhibitions of work by photographers both local and international, with talks, discussions, seminars and even walks, all designed to put the spotlight on photography in Frome. The project has already had a fantastic start,  and will continues with more events until 15 July, all through the town festival - look out for the brochures if you live near.

The first opening was on Tuesday, with two splendid sets of  B&W studies of local life in Black Swan Round Tower, featuring farming & rural life images by both James Ravilious and Chris Chapman, who will be giving a talk on his pictures of Dartmoor on July 1st.

The following night, Gallery at the Station hosted an impressive showcase of the wide variety of themes and styles represented in the personal work of Frome's photographers. The woodland dance set above, by Mark Brookes, celebrating feminine power in a collaborative project with Feraline: Freedom, Sensuality, Power, is there. So too are the images of Frome at night by James Butler-Bartholomew which Frome's Mayor, Sara Butler-Bartholomew, is viewing here. 

Thursday's event was Culture Pool at the Makers Yard, featuring a large-format poster show - and great sound, by all accounts, though sadly this clashed for me so I missed the party but the yard is still full of great fly-posters, well worth a look.  

And on Sunday, Rook Lane Chapel opened its doors to a spectacular exhibition filling the walls below those iconic high windows, with stands displaying work from a diverse range of high-status international photographers. Here is where you'll see the full-size image of Dave Grohl featured on the brochures, and here too are atmospheric black-&-white shadowy images, and feminist subversions, and biofuturist imaginings, and intimate street portraits, and much more... including a fascinating series of images by Hanna-Katrina Jędrosz taken along the 'European Green Belt' - the former Iron Curtain borderlands - which runs from Norway to Bulgaria as a no-man's land where wildlife flourishes and locals erect their own symbols. Each of the six featured photographers has amazing work on show so it's hard to select one image but this is from my personal favourite set, the portraits from East London by Trinidadian Robert Huggins. - somehow both honest & theatrical at the same time.

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Moving on now from images to words, as my own personal big event was the launch of Blow-Ins published by Hobnob Press, held at Hunting Raven Books on a sunny Tuesday night with a gratifyingly full room - thanks to Pete Gage for the photo as I forgot, thanks to everyone who asked questions &/or said nice things about the book, and to Iona for hosting. Blow-Ins is also now available by post, with a mystifying array of prices including $20.73 on ebay, but do support your local bookshop - it'll be less than a tenner there.

Thursday evening is open-mic night at Guggleton Farm Arts, always a fun event with a wide range of offerings from the floor. This week's highlight for me was an entertaining set from Leon Sea with a strong line in political comedy, including a version of that wonderful Phat Bollard satirical classic I give my money to the millionaires and Donovan's Goldwatch Blues in support of the train strikers, with its plangent chorus 'Get them to sign on the dotted line and work for fifty years.'     

But this week's big music news is, of course, the drop-in visit of Paul McCartney, doing a Foo Fighters with a surprise instant concert at the Cheese & Grain just for Frome.  News broke on Thursday while I was camping in Dorset after the Open Mic session at Guggleton Farm and tickets were all gone two hours later, but cameras weren't allowed anyway, so here's the image from Paul's twitter feed

plus my personal memory of Macca, from 1980's London when my photos & articles on photography were published in various magazines, and Hot Shoe Magazine commissioned me to interview Linda McCartney about her upcoming book of Linda's Pictures. We met at the Apple Studio and half-way through our chat someone could be heard approaching along the corridor, whistling Long Winding Road. 'Oh, that's my husband Paul,' Linda explained as the someone entered, and she introduced us. I still have that tape, with Paul saying 'Hullo, Crysse' and me trying to breathe...  

And now that days of midsummer blue-sky sunshine are less sparse, Frome's gardens and lanes are thrumming with bees & insects and damsel-flies are flickering along the river. Your local view this week is from the north side of town, the start of a field-and-woodland walk which passes the never-used canal bridges beside the river. Fingers crossed for more days like this next week.