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   CLUB SANDWICH 45

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LINDA CIRCLES THE GLOBE

Club Sandwich 45

            After the triumph of Linda's Royal Photographic Society show at Bath, her exhibition (now called simply 'Photographs') moved to the Olympus Gallery, Hamburg, a city with vivid memories for Paul. After a major opening on 19th May, the show ran until 29th June, drawing much favourable comment. At presstime, the likely next stops were the Olympus galleries in Amsterdam and Tokyo, with an August opening likely in Amsterdam. Independent galleries in South America are also being approached, so yet another continent seems ripe for conquest.
            Readers will remember that the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street, London was to benefit from the proceeds of the RPS show. When Linda presented a cheque to nurse Melanie Ball on 30th June, the hospital also received a tremendous boost from another quarter. As part of staging Linda's exhibition, Olympus were to make a donation to the hospital, but few can have expected its generosity and scope.
            And 'scope' is the operative word. Every week, heartbreak stories in the press tell of children in particular whose only hope is complex and expensive treatment, often in a distant country. The dilemma of modern medicine is that less newsworthy, but still important, treatment is restricted unless firm limits are set to the number of expensive, high-tech operations.
            Olympus' imaginative answer was a £180,000 gastroscope, an amazing instrument for the diagnosis and treatment of intestinal problems, especially in children. Pictures of your insides can be taken via a tube containing 40 000 lenses, or the curious doctor may simply look down it to assist in diagnosis. Operations by laser can also be carried out via the tube.
            Werner Teuffel, European head of the Olympus Optical Co., presented the gastroscope to delighted nursing officer Lindy Taylor. And, in best Gallery Corner style, ten year-old patient Tina Pegrum gave Linda a picture of flowers she'd painted. When Linda began her photographic career, could she have dreamt it would lead to this?
            For a personal view of the pictures which initiated this charitable tale, we turned to Brian Clarke, an artist friend of Linda's and consultant on her second book proper, Photographs, who attended the Hamburg opening.
            "The Hamburg show was smaller than Bath and something of a shock to the German audience, who were acquainted with her work via Linda's Pictures, mainly featuring portraits of personalities. They were surprised at the breadth of the subject matter and the depth of her treatment of it.
            "The people I spoke to were very impressed with the sun prints' softness and intimacy. Most photographic exhibitions are of hard, high-contrast work. In fact, 'intimate' is the word to describe the opening: it was almost as if Linda were there, though in fact she wasn't.
            "It was refreshingly honest and straightforward to the Germans. My work is quite well known there, so people addressed things to me as an artist, not knowing I knew Linda. A critic who interviewed me for Die Zeit years ago - he's now with Deutsche Art - said to me, 'It's rare to see a painter at a photographic exhibition, but I can see why you've come'."

Club Sandwich 45

            A book, England's Glory, was published by the Council for the Protection of Rural England with Weidenfeld & Nicholson in April at £14.95. Commemorating CPRE's 1986 photographic exhibition of endangered beauty spots, it features work by Linda and the other leading photographers involved.