‘What do you know? That I felt that way, or you did?’ This exhibition has sharpened Erica’s attention to detail, woken her research muscles again. And though she wants to shower, to sleep, she wants her marriage to work, more. Well, that’s a relief. There have been times lately when she felt she would have exchanged everything except Tom for twelve hours’ sleep.

‘Both,’ Marcus says, and adds, ‘We need to talk, don’t we?’

‘Yes. We do.’ The new life in Erica makes itself known in an urgent desire for cereal with hot milk. There’s no point in trying to keep this to herself, and anyway, it’s not fair. Marcus isn’t her enemy. ‘And I’ve got something important to tell you.’

Part 7: Developing

Part 7: Developing

There are things that a competent photographer can do in a darkroom to alter an image. You can crop to show what you want, and exclude what you would prefer the viewer not to see. What you cannot do is get detail from a negative, if the detail isn’t there in the first place. Don’t be afraid to look closely; examine your subject. Interrogate it.

Veronica Moon, Women in Photographs (unpublished)

‘Veronica Moon winning the Political Photograph of the Year Award, 1979’

Exhibition Section: Focus on the Photographer

Images of Moon are few and far between. Like many photographers she was, and is, if not exactly camera-shy, then wary of handing over control to another photographer. She’d rather be behind the camera, deciding what is seen.

In this section of the exhibition you will see images of Moon, some of which were taken as self-portraits with a timer on the camera (if you look closely, you’ll see that in the full-length self-portraits she has the remote shutter in her right hand). Some are press photographs taken at public appearances, including the awarding of the Political Photograph of the Year Award in December 1979 for the portrait she took of Margaret Thatcher earlier that year. The remainder are from Moon’s private collection. Many were taken by Leonie Barratt during the years the two shared a flat in London (1970–1977). It’s clear from Moon’s expressions in several of these that she was taken unawares.

Photographs on film could not be as easily cropped, filtered or deleted as they are today. When you leave the exhibition, next time you take a photograph, challenge yourself to do what Veronica Moon did:

Spend some time thinking about what you want the image to capture.

Take one photograph.

Accept it.

In 2018:

• A survey finds that ten per cent of girls aged 14–21 have been unable to afford sanitary protection

• Fewer than a third of the UK’s most influential jobs are held by women

• Theresa May is Britain’s second female prime minister. She and her husband, when interviewed, refer to ‘girl jobs’ and ‘boy jobs’