Stuart and Gabrielle, Saint Maden.

It is strange how you meet people and how photography brings us together. A couple of years ago my old tutor (from my MA) and good friend passed away suddenly. I wanted to do something to show off Clive’s (Egginton) photographs and I was putting together a series of exhibitions with another photographer, so the obvious thing to do was to include Clive’s photos. Clive was a keen film user and used his two Leica’s, so getting access to his archive was difficult. Another ex-student of Clive’s gave me the contact details of Stuart Anderson who had some images, but Stuart lives in Saint Maden, Brittany, France.

Last summer Stuart had also put some images of Clive’s in an exhibition of Saint Maden and its people in the surrounding villages. My parent’s live in Brittany and while visiting them we decided to make the two-hour drive from mum and dad’s to see Stuart and make ourselves more acquainted. After viewing the exhibition, we had a long chat about Clive and photography and life in general over a glass of home made apple juice and tuna sandwiches (of which one of Stuart’s cat had much of the tuna (not the bread)). The photos from this trip are on my hard drive somewhere.

This year the visit was fleeting, after flowing the satnav from Caen (pronounced Kon) all went well until ‘She’ (the satnav lady) decided that we should leave the main roads and drive through a field. I often get old looks from the French for driving a car with British number plates, but I did have a very puzzled Brit (judging by his number plate) look at me with bemusement as I drove past his house into the field, no doubt smiling away to myself.

Anyway, the short visit had us chatting about photography and the fact I had a Phase 1 camera in the car made Stuart weak at the knees eventually ended up with taking a couple of quick snapshots of Stuart and his partner Gabrielle. What Stuart was supposed to be doing was helping to putting together a fête for the local community; instead we chatted about photography, exhibitions, trips to the UK, the French photographer JR and Stuart’s trip to ‘The Jungle’ in Calais. We did do some work, we put the bar together and piped up the bier and cidre for the grownups, while others got the games and food ready.

Next time we will stay for longer, but in the meantime the photos will have to suffice. Cheers Stuart.