#67: Offline Journal Newsletter : 26 March '24
Photography in Wales
Hello again
Here’s a bonus free Newsletter with a book review and news on ticket availability for the upcoming 2024 EYE International Photography Festival this October in Aberystwyth.
You can check on current and upcoming photography exhibitions and events I’ve been made aware of using the button below.
Brian
COAL AND COMMUNITY IN WALES: a book review by Glenn Edwards
Photography at its best can surround moments of time and create capsules of history. We look back at the stories from the moment photography was invented in 1839 and converse about the fashion, the hairstyles, the identity, the 60th of a second when a memory for the future was frozen.
The miner’s strike was a moment of history that still has relevance for the communities it affected throughout the UK and Thatcher is still a swear word for many, especially in the Welsh valleys where one by one the pit head was left redundant with the loss of thousands of jobs.
Richard Williams was a young photographer earning his crust from the then Thomson newspapers The Western Mail, South Wales Echo and long-gone Glamorgan Gazette as a freelance. He was at the centre of the venom aimed at the ‘scabs’ who defied the picket line and the police lines protecting them.
It was a tough arena to be a photographer, often documenting the violence of a pack on both sides, but the stories revolve not just on the picket lines but in the home, and in the pits themselves and the stories of that time are captured in ‘Coal and Community in Wales – Images of the Miner’s Strike’: before during and after, with Richard Williams dramatic photographs accompanied by words evocatively written by his award-winning journalist and wife Amanda Powell.
Williams didn’t have to attend the violence but he felt compelled to be there to document events, often uncommissioned, and his images show a closeness to the subject – finding the right place and time to capture the history evolving before his lens.
One of the most powerful photographs in the book is strike-breaking Monty Morgan arriving at his Betws home from a shift (above). Striking miners throwing their feelings at him through aggressive pointing fingers. It was a time when neighbour battled against neighbour, brother against brother and when Morgan became the first miner in S.Wales to break the strike, in the words of NUM official Eurfyl Davies, “It affected the village right through, it split a wonderful community”.
Williams photographed the industry years before the strike, so it’s perhaps unsurprising he’d be immersed in when events unfolded. His images of the last shift at the Coegnant pit, Maesteg in 1981 are poignant. The miners agreed, narrowly, to the closure with the promise of jobs in other pits. Pits that were all to close just years later. The images of miners arriving for that last shift and in the cage to go to the coal face tell a story of an uncertain future but also the women in the canteen, workers in the lamp room, surveyors - all showing it was not just the coal-covered miners who were affected. Even Dolly and Dai ‘ the Duff’ who ran Maesteg’s Duffryn Hotel at the time. Their portrait-posing behind the bar. Did they realise the extent the closure would have on their business?.
Williams didn’t just attend the picket lines at the coalfield. He followed the miners to the steel works at Port Talbot, where armoured lorries were taking raw materials in to keep the furnaces moving. One picture especially tells the futile story of a miner suffocated of space in the centre of the rushing police advance (above). Thatcher was now calling the miners ‘the enemy within’.
Amanda Powell has enhanced the pictures with the story of the events and memories of those fighting the fight. Union official Ian Isaac remembers the atmosphere being ‘very, very tense’. He adds ‘Miners aren’t afraid of a ruck so I think the frame of mind was: if the police want a ruck, they can have one’. Williams’ images reinforce the comments and his reflections at the end of each chapter add to the information of Amanda’s writing. Williams says,‘ it all seemed fairly futile and more symbolic than effective and I sensed that due to the number of police and their training, the miners were very unlikely to have much of an impact on this site’
Amanda and Richard are at pains not to forget the importance and solidarity of wives and women to the cause: from kitchen to defiance on demonstrations and action on the picket line shown throughout the book.
The stories are not just about the battle of the picket line but the effects and impact on family and community, with the powerful photographs recording an industry’s demise. Beautifully written and easy to read, the words add to the photography and the photographs add to the words - combining to produce a document of an important time in Welsh history.
As Williams says, “On the first day back after the dispute those that stood firm shunned Monty Morgan…what none of them knew at the time was that nine months later, men would be marching again – this time on the last day of coal mining in the valley”.
www.richardwilliamsphoto.co.uk
Coal and Community in Wales: Images of the Miner’s Strike is published by Y Lolfa (March 2024). 210 x 210mm, 128 pages, softcover.
A selection of the work is currently being exhibited at Rhondda Heritage Park and runs until 31 May 2024 (see event listing below).
Thanks to Glenn Edwards for writing the review.
THE EYE FESTIVAL 2024 - TICKETS
Early Bird tickets for the EYE Festival 2024 weekend 18-20 October are now available, as are details of five confirmed guest speakers and the weekend schedule, on the festival website.
Photojournalist Glenn Edwards who founded The EYE festival with Aberystwyth Arts Centre back in 2012, told me:
“The 2024 Eye International Photography Festival will have one of its best and most interesting line up's. Magnum member Lua Ribeira, portraits by Harry Borden, multi-award winner Liam McBurney PA from N.Ireland, Joel Goodman, Philip Hatcher-Moore and Denise Maxwell are confirmed and we’ll be announcing another world-renowned speaker in April.
Photography in Wales needs supporting, so we’d encourage photography fans to start making plans now, book their early bird tickets and join us for a great weekend in Aberystwyth!” – Glenn Edwards, EYE Festival Director
The EARLY BIRD Festival Passes offer a £15 reduction and provide access to all speaker sessions on Saturday and Sunday, the Saturday evening TISH film screening and are available up to 30 June 2024 for £50.00 or £30.00 for students.
Information on speakers, tickets and the festival programme is available on The EYE website but more information on portfolio reviews, National Library visit and exhibitions will be added in coming weeks.
www.theeyefestival.com
Early Bird tickets can be ordered online directly via the Aberystwyth Arts Centre box office using the button link below:
NEW OFFLINE JOURNAL #012 - APRIL 2024
If you don’t already have a copy of the current issue of Offline Journal #011 which looks at self-publishing in photography - there’s still time to grab one of the very few remaining copies or also secure the new issue #012 to be published in April by taking a two-issue subscription with free subscription postage included!
FOUND IN A BOX!
It’s always a pleasant surprise to stumble across little treasures now and again…
THE VALLEYS
I have just one copy - the very last! - of Offline Journal issue #010 ‘THE VALLEYS’ available (found in a box of material taken to a Ffotogallery book fair around this time last year).
If you would be interested adding this special 40-page issue featuring contemporary work made in the south Wales Valleys to your collection for just £12, send me an email confirming your interest to offline.journal@gmail.com and I’ll respond with a secure, one-off payment link. (Please put THE VALLEYS in your email subject line)
Price: £12 + £3 P&P (first come-first served) UK only.
CATALOG 001
In the very same box, I also found five copies of CATALOG 001 which was published to accompany Magnum photographer David Hurn’s exhibition ‘COLWYN BAY: 30 Mile Radius’ shown at Oriel Colwyn during the Summer of 2023. This 210x210mm 40-page Catalog was the first in the current Offline Journal series of three.
Previously made available to Offline Journal Subscriber+ supporters as part of their subscription, these five copies are signed by David Hurn and I’m happy to offer them at just £12 per copy. Again, drop me an email if you’d like to nab one of this limited edition of only 150 copies, with 30 Mile Radius in your email subject line.
Price: £12 + £3 P&P (first five respondees only, one copy per person). UK only.
