Photography exhibition in Priory Park’s reopened cafe

Talented local amateur Bill Bott displays his stunning images in the Crouch End cafe

A photography exhibition in Priory Park’s cafe features springs in Yellowstone National Park and a stunning solar eclipse taken in Nebraska.

Retired architect Bill Bott has lived in Crouch End for 40 years and produces the annual fund-raising Priory Park calendar.

Although he continues to photograph the park daily in all weathers, the exhibition More Things in Heaven and Earth features images from further afield including Monet’s garden in Giverny, icicle-draped fountains in Trafalgar Square, and an irridescent damselfly in Hampshire.

50 percent of proceeds will go to the World Health Organisation’s Covid 19 relief fund.

“I take photographs obsessively of the park sometimes twice a day,” says Bill, who waited two hours to capture the split second when the damselfly opened its wings.

“It’s extraordinary for a park of its size and the heart of the park is the cafe. The manager Flora is a really lovely person who runs groups for mothers and babies. It has recently reopened after the coronovirus lockdown. I am not a professional photographer but I do quite a bit and love composite pictures like the solar eclipse.”

Cash raised from Bill’s calendars supplied the seed money for a scheme to restore the park’s community tennis courts.

He was so appalled at Donald Trump cutting funding to the WHO in the midst of a pandemic “at a time when we all need to pull together” that he wanted to donate to the organisation’s emergency fund.

More Things in Heaven and Earth runs until August 15.