I’m posting this blog from time to time to give an update on where I’ve been travelling in pursuit of the Kersting Chase, and what place-pages I’m currently working on, and any features of these.
Winter 2023
The London page has now been posted; it’s been a while in preparation, given the extensive material on London from the Kersting b/w archive. AFK would make many return visits to particular sites over the years, with St Pauls and Trafalgar Sq being particularly favoured. In this page collection we see a time span from 28 to 77 years (St Pancras, St Pauls). The post war images Kersting took around St Pauls are especially fascinating. I’ve lots more material stacked up for London, so may add an extra page at a later date.
My picture-taking has progressed at a good pace, but it’s resulted in a back-log of places to work on (I’m recently returned from Edinburgh and Glasgow to add even more to the stock).
Here is the rough outline of pages to be worked on and published:
The South (coast, Sussex, Kent, Hampshire)
The South West
Manchester & York
The Cote d’ Azur
Cathedrals of Normandy
Edinburgh & Glasgow
Film
I’m increasingly using film as I think its more attuned to the nature of the project, given Kersting’s immense efforts in using film and 4x5 glass plates for his monochrome work. I note if film has been used in the captions on my pictures.
March update
The Cotswold page is now live, and this whole exercise was done using film cameras - either a 35mm or a 120 roll film camera. Film is a steep learning curve where mistakes are easy to make and costly (ie losing a roll somewhere !), despite me being familiar with film many, many years ago.
A F Kersting : St Pauls 1947
© The Courtald
Summer 2024
With the Manchester and York page uploaded, we can see the incredibly long and rich career Anthony Kersiting enjoyed. The photograph of the bombed Manchester Cathedral was taken in 1948 when he was 32, and we see him photographing the newly built Salford Imperial War Museum in 2002, when he was 86. Our earliest photographs in the Courtauld archive of his monochrome images date from 1937, - at least a 65 year life in photography.
My photos for this page were taken in 2022 whilst using a digital camera, but following this I'm increasingly turning to film.
Autumn (fall)
I was considering adding the Normandy Cathedrals to the French Riviera, but have decided to split them, so I've now published a small page just on Nice, Monaco and it's seaside neighbours.
I do go off-piste from time to time during the chase, and shoot pictures that just grab my attention, so I've added a page "off-piste" where I'll drop these into, though not particularly being part of the project.
Spring 2025
I've grouped together some of the south images under the loose term "Wessex" to include the south coast cities and Somerset. My images from these locale's were made early-on in the project, so they are digital
