Priscilla Turner's Gallery
PRISCILLA TURNER is a biblical philologist by trade. She has been reading ancient languages, starting with Latin, since 1948. Photography has often served as light (!) relief. She learnt to view, focus, compose and expose on her architect grandfather’s 8x10 plate camera with bellows and a rising front, and for years saw and photographed in B&W only.
She loves scenes with old or graceful buildings. Her Untouched image of aboriginal forest, with nothing man-made in it, is an exception.
In 1960, when she brought home her first colour slides in 35mm format, her father said that one would "never get anything worthwhile off those ridiculous little frames", and that "It's not really photography, of course, those pretty colours". No colour emulsion at that stage would resolve anything like what a good 35mm lens would put on it. Little did Daddy know how emulsions would nowadays reach equilibrium with lenses, or that modern scanning would enable us to make big prints even from faded, grainy 35mm Agfachromes nearly 50 years old. The resolution in her old originals is not high, but the conception was often good, even 'painterly'. She has tended to photograph what she would paint if she were a painter. She thinks of her scenic shots as a way to remind herself of what it felt like to stand in places where she will never stand again. They may perhaps enable others to feel that they can just walk through the frame into these same places.
One or two B&W images in her galleries started life as coloured, and are offered in both forms. Not all are suitable for conversion that way. Any may be made available in B&W if you request it. But bear in mind that B&W is a different way of seeing.
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