#5 - Strange Times
Thinking fodder and update on next issue of Offline Journal
We find ourselves in strange times. Very.
I hope this finds you and yours well in the ongoing restrictions around the Coronavirus emergency.
As we find ourselves in lockdown, I’ve decided to publish this Newsletter every Sunday for the foreseeable future. I’ll let you know as and when it reverts back to its usual fortnightly schedule.
I’ve been immersed in nailing down final editorial adjustments and artwork of Offline Journal’s April issue, ready to send to the printers. As Journal subscribers will be aware, I’m now (temporarily) holding off printing and shipping the next issue to avoid any concerns people have around receiving items in the post that could have been handled several times in the delivery chain.
Issue #004 of Offline Journal is another with 32 pages - packed with articles and exhibition reviews (three of them) covering photography in Wales. It will be accompanied by a new Offline Essay (see below) for those who are backing Offline by kindly taking out an annual subscription for issues #003 & #004.
New subscriptions for October’s issue #005 and issue #006 in April 2021 - plus supplements - will be available shortly.
(I have a handful of copies of issue #003 remaining, so if you’d like to receive it and the new issue #004 plus the first two Offline Essays plus the Ron McCormick ‘How Green was my Valley’ exhibition supplement, subscribe online here.)
Offline Essay #3
The new Offline Essay accompanying the subscriber issue of #004 of Offline Journal is a timely (and now never-more relevant) piece of writing as Wales and wider society prepares for new and profound change.
“As photographers, it is important we document the world around us, particularly recording the things that others cannot easily access or see...". Paul Cabuts
How will photography play a role in recording the imminent and unprecedented challenges across Wales? 'Sites of struggle and photography' by Paul Cabuts is worthy reading material for photographers interested in making selfless documentary work.
Will photographers emerging from lockdown across Wales seek out sites of struggle within their own communities where they may invest time to make important new social documentary work? I hope so: there will be important records to be made as worthy additions to Wales’ historical visual culture.
In The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence, author Susie Linfield asks:
Why are photographs so good at making us see cruelty? Partly, I think, because photographs bring home to us the reality of physical suffering with a literalness and an irrefutability that neither literature nor painting can claim. “Hunger looks like the man that hunger is killing,” wrote the Uruguayan essayist Eduardo Galeano as he looked at a photograph by Sebastiao Salgado.
There will of course be the green shoots of more positive and happier subjects and stories to document too, but I do think we lack a strong visual polemic in contemporary Welsh photography of late. I’m happy to be corrected.
Her, as if published in tandem to support Paul’s essay, a recent report titled Townscapes: Wales by the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge (January 2020) makes for sober (but required) reading and the issues it highlights here in Wales are grim - even before the current virus crisis hit.
Key Findings in the report include:
Wales has, on average, more deprivation in its towns than any other region in England or Scotland.
Seven towns in Wales have twice as much ‘severe deprivation’ than the average British town.
Eight out of the ten most deprived towns in Wales are located in the South Wales Valleys.
No Welsh town features in Britain’s 40 most economically improving towns.
Welsh towns are mostly small with dense public service provision – they provide more schools, doctor’s surgeries and bus stops than towns elsewhere
You can read a selection of Paul Cabuts’ previous writing on photography and Wales on his website - a great resource on a quiet evening. And I encourage you to sign-up to Paul’s email Newsletter for updates, information on special editions and events relating to his new book ‘Not Still: Rhondda Photographs’ to be published in coming weeks.
Interesting distractions for you
Photobooks - discussion
Why not revisit issue #4 of this Newsletter discussing Photobooks where a couple of interesting discussion threads might pique your interest. I encourage you to join in and add you own suggestions and views as I’ll be keeping this and future discussion threads open with the hope they might become a useful resource and future reference point for readers.
Offline Essay #1 by Daniel Meadows
Previously only available to subscribers of the printed Journal, ‘The Daniel Meadows Archive in nine people’ essay, written by the great man himself, is now available to purchase for just £2.00 + P&P. The first in a series of new writing on contemporary photography (in and beyond Wales), this essay - as with the Journal content - will only exist in printed form. Offline.
(Offline Essay #2 was a special poem written by Sion Tomos Owen to accompany Dan Wood’s ‘Gap in the Hedge’ exhibition poster at the 2019 Northern Eye Festival. Both these Supplements will accompany a future issue of Offline Journal for subscribers).
Better than telly…
On the subject of Daniel Meadows, if you haven’t already see it; I’d highly recommend the short Ffoton film I co-produced with him in 2018: ‘Encounters with Strangers: The photography of Niall McDiarmid’ - shot at The Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol as Niall was hanging his ‘Town to Town’ exhibition with the MPF team. A lovely conversation between them…
Subscribers to this Newsletter can leave comments (and I encourage them to do so!) to express their views and ideas around photography to hopefully stimulate further constructive and supportive discussion with others.
Basic community guidelines: be active and supportive where possible in feedback and discussion threads, be respectful of others, avoid profanity - trolling or abuse will result in being immediately unsubscribed from the Newsletter. Simple.
Offline Journal Newsletter is published every first and third Sunday each month to offer the wider photography community an opportunity to discuss photography in, from and of Wales.
Back Issues of and Subscriptions to the limited edition printed Offline Journal (published every April & October) available via www.offline.wales
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(Thanks again either way! - Brian)