WRU National League – Division 1 East 11th November 2017. I went to watch Blaenavon play this afternoon, ahead of the Wales game. Blaenavon RFC was formed in 1877. Rugby had spread up the valleys from Cardiff, Newport and Swansea in the mid 1800s with the railways that served the coalfields and rugby’s close association […]
Author: Ian Butler
Etifeddiaeth
In writing about Afon Lwyd, it is very easy to follow the thoughts of R.S. Thomas or to enter the imagined world Alexander Cordell’s Rape of the Fair Country, which is set in Blaenavon, and to do so would probably lead to another depressing, ‘coal and choirs’/ quirky characters’ photo-essay of a sort that remains […]
Brittle with relics …
This post is the second tracing my journey down the Afon Lwyd (see Down the Valley, posted 23/10 ). This post describes the last mile or so, along the western ridge, down from Varteg to Abersychan. From Talywain, the eastern slopes revert to open country but the disguise is a thin one. What has become […]
Jonas Bendiksen – Satellites
Jonas Bendiksen (b. 8/9/77) is a Norwegian photographer and has been a Member of Magnum Photos since 2008. After an internship in Magnum Photos London Office in 1996, he went to live in the former USSR. While there, he produced the images for Satellites – Photographs from the Fringes of the former Soviet Union, which […]
Down the valley …
From Blaenavon to ‘The British’ I have been back to Afon Lwyd twice since my last post on this subject; once on a grey, dismal and drizzling day and once in the late autumn sunshine. I have now travelled the length of the valley, mostly on foot, to make sure I had a mental map […]
Reference back …
The only photos that I carry with me and look at every day are photographs of my children, taken at odd ages, many years ago. These are the most important photographs I shall ever see or own. It doesn’t matter that they scarcely resemble the people they represent and the precise moment they were taken […]
Ian Macdonald
Ian Macdonald’s work is characterised by a deep affection for the people and the landscape of his native Teesside. While his subjects may, on the surface, seem ‘unattractive’ (industrial plants and processes; workplaces; desolate salt marshes), he brings a lyricism to his work that does not soften the edge of what he has to represent […]
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 […]
Crumlin Redux
The previous blog was written as the basis of a classroom presentation to my fellow MA students at the University of Gloucestershire. In the discussion that followed, I was asked why had I chosen to present the images in black and white; more specifically, why had I chosen to present photographs of people in this […]
Crumlin
These photographs were taken as part of a festival put on by Glofa Crumlin Cyf in September 2017. Glofa is a charity that works to preserve and restore the Crumlin Navigation Colliery, situated in the Ebbw Valley, South Wales. This post was the basis of a presentation made of ‘current work’ for the “Establishing Practice’ module of the MA in Photography at the University of Gloucestershire.
