A pinch of salt

Peter Marshall

Members may like to know that Roger provided Committee members with a more comprehensive breakdown of the responses (a few details from which I have taken the liberty of adding to Roger’s article) which is too long to publish - interested members should ask any of last year’s committee for a copy.

I’ve never been a great fan of such surveys, though I don’t think we should ignore the results and should read them - and Roger’s summaries very carefully. However there are some things which need to be borne in mind.

Firstly, only existing members returned the survey. Any who had already left because they had not found what they wanted in LIP are not represented, nor indeed those many photographers in the London area who have yet to join us. Then of course, some of us are not very good at filling in and returning such things (I still haven’t done mine!) and those who did are not necessarily representative of the more than two-thirds of us who didn’t quite manage it.

Two things struck me as of particular interest in Roger’s piece in this issue; first the large number of ‘original’ members still with us, and secondly the characterisation he makes of two groups within LIP, although I am not quite sure whether I know what the ‘pure photography mainstream’ is. David Murray’s piece I think illustrates that it is certainly not monolithic.

One statistic I personally found gratifying was the 66% of you who read all of LipService and 32% who read at least some of it. Of course I’d like to get the percentage that submit work for it up to 100% , so please make an effort for February’s issue. Portrait format prints suitable for the cover are particularly invited, but everything is welcome.

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