Typography & design by
Richard Wolfströme

Exhibition and installation
by Standard 8

Website
Words William Shaw
Design Richard Wolfströme
Photography Kenny Laurenson

Publishing consultant Adrian Driscoll

An Unmadeup Production

"We’re going to do it! We’re going to do it!"

First Light, a photographers’ gallery at 3 Nile Street

They don’t know each other really. Judy would give Ruth a smile in the corridors of the college where they lectured, but it is the end of the winter term, and there is that sense of life relaxing.

"Fancy going out for a coffee?"

"Yeah, let’s."

They each understand the other has had a tough year. Judy has split from a long-time partner; Ruth’s father died in February. Now they’re both sitting in the café in Nile Street, drinking cappuccinos, talking about what’s gone.

Ruth finds Judy easy company, partly because they’re both thinking, where do we go now? All year, since her father died, Ruth has felt lost. Even when you know a parent has cancer, it’s still such a shock. You wonder, how did that happen? She had felt so very close to him, never really understanding the meaning of the word gut-wrenching until he was gone. She loved his understatedness, the way he’d seemed so different from other men.

Coffee drunk, they wander slowly up Nile Street. Judy is a photographer. They pause in front of the small gallery’s window, admiring the beautiful photographs of New York in the window.

"Shall we go in?" They have the time now term is finally over.

There is something wonderful about the skyscrapers in that city. New York is a place where everything rises.

"I’ve never been to New York."

"Neither have I. I really fancy going there."

Then Judy says, "I know someone with a flat."

They move swiftly from, oh that would be nice, to, yes, we could! Judy calls and discovers that the flat is empty after Christmas; Ruth finds plane tickets they can both stretch to. Running down the college corridor, Ruth shouts gleefully, "We’re going to do it! We’re going to do it!"

It’ll mean being in New York for the New Year, and for her father’s birthday on February 2nd. After the long time of down in the darkness, it’s that moment of finally coming up for air.