Afon Lwyd

Over the next week or two, I plan to travel along and photograph part of the Afon Lwyd Valley in South Wales, between the towns of Abersychan and Blaenavon. The word ‘travel’ is deliberate as my purpose is to capture a sense of the place, people and culture of the area, as a travel photographer might. The project will include elements of landscape, documentary and ‘street’ photography.

The Afon Lwyd, in the Borough of Torfaen, is the easternmost of the South Wales valleys and one of the least well-known, despite the fact that at its northern end, the town of Blaenavon, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. Relics of the area’s industrial history, which began in the late seventeenth century, are everywhere across the landscape; many now decaying and being lost back into the ground.

Coal extraction in the area ended over 40 years ago and with industrial decline came economic decline. The area has a higher level of unemployment than the Wales’ average and, by many indicators, the area remains significantly disadvantaged.

My interest is not so much in the area’s past however but in its present; not so much in the origin of the challenges facing the people who live there but in how they are meeting them. This is why I want to approach this project as a travel photographer; to take with me a sense of the explorer rather than the historian; to experience the area as a visitor and to try to capture the valley’s identity as it is being defined by the people who live there.

The question of identity has been central to Welsh political life for generations. The distinctiveness of Wales and what being Welsh means is strongly evident therefore in the work of Welsh photographers. Perhaps best known is the work of David Hurn. More recently, photographers like Roger Tiley,  Pete Davis and Gawain Barnard have continued to explore what ‘being Welsh’ means, beyond the coal and choirs documentaries of previous generations. Photographic communities such as Ffoton,  A Fine Beginning and less formally #urbanwales have developed to provide a point of reference for photographers in Wales. Like their counterparts in Scotland (e.g. Document Scotland), there are many photographers in Wales who want “to witness and photograph the important and diverse stories within [the country] at one of the most important times in our nation’s history’. I would like to locate this project within that context.

So far, I have made a brief scoping visit to Blaenavon. Shopkeepers have clearly embraced the ‘heritage’ brand, if not the heritage itself which appears rather prosaic by comparison to the ingenuity of those who are making their living in the town.

As the town evolves and regenerates, legacy buildings are being re-purposed and  its architectural past is echoed in new rows of rising terraces.

Blaenavon’s former chapels seem to be engaging positively with the future, despite the detritus of the past.

There are clearly stories to be told and interiors to explore, behind the net curtains.

My plan is to include reflections on the natural and industrial landscapes between the various villages and towns in the valley but this may be over-ambitious in the time available. I will prioritise the urban areas if time becomes an issue, largely because I have very limited experience of documentary photography and none at all of street photography and these are areas that I want to develop through this project. If the potential for depth outweighs the scope for breadth, I will concentrate on a single town in the valley, probably the largest, Blaenavon.

To reduce uncertainty, I plan to shoot digitally, using equipment with which I am familiar and at this stage, I have no real idea what form of output will follow.

(The above is intended to meet the requirements of AD7801, the first module of the MA in Photography that I am currently studying; namely that students ‘propose and produce a coherent body of photographic work … [as] a basis for identifying current experience and the scope for developing practice through supported research and experimentation of ideas and mediums.’)

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