After 11 years of being associated with St Leonards and Hastings, photographer JJ Waller is proud to finally be a part of the Coastal Currents festival this September. Erica Smith interviews him about his appearance at the inaugural Through The Lens Festival of Photography from 31 August to 8 September at St Mary in the Castle.
It is hard setting up a new project in Hastings because there is always so much going on; and a brand new photographic festival could have been labelled madness. There are a lot of good photographers in the area but photographers are notoriously lone wolves and do not like to be herded together. HOT’s Lauris Morgan-Griffiths went to talk to the Through the Lens Festival team, Jo Kilmartin and Kim Hall, to find out more.
Hastings, in many ways, is spoilt for choice for culture that is on the doorstep: amazing gardens as well as artists’ and writers’ houses open to the public – Charleston, Bateman’s, Farley Farm, Knole, Sissinghurst; live bands and talks. A few weeks ago HOT’s Lauris Morgan-Griffiths tripped across Antony Penrose who had come to the Printworks from nearby Farley Farm to talk about Joan Miró, who he had met as a child, and his children’s book Miró’s Magic Animals.
“I was terribly, terribly pretty. I looked like an angel, but I was a fiend inside”. This is how Lee Miller described herself in an interview towards the end of her life. ‘A fiend’ she may have been, but the ‘terribly pretty’ was a bit of an understatement; in the 1920s and 30s, she was considered one of the great beauties of her time. HOT’s Lauris Morgan-Griffiths, a great admirer ever since she first came across Miller’s photographs many years ago, spoke on the phone to her son, Antony Penrose, about a play based on his mother’s life and work – The Angel and the Fiend – at St Mary in the Castle.
