Crumlin

I took these photographs as part of a festival organised by Glofa Navigation Cyf in September 2017. Glofa is a charity that works to preserve and restore the Crumlin Navigation Colliery, in the Ebbw Valley, South Wales. The ‘Navi’ is a nationally important, nearly complete complex of 11 Grade II* and II buildings. All are now semi-derelict.

The brief was firstly to ‘show the current condition of the buildings and the atmosphere of the site’ and to display these photographs during the course of the festival and secondly, to record the festival itself; specifically, ‘to show local people, young and old, having fun’.

The following three photographs were among those taken to meet the first part of the brief. I shot the first through a small opening in the locked doors of the Fanhouse; its vaults and rose windowed interior now filled with rubbish.

The next two show the colliery’s landmark chimney stack; firstly, through the steel roof supports of what was once the pit’s ‘offices’ and secondly, viewed through the more delicate tracery of a cobweb; neither any more substantial than the other, in time.

I took the next photo on the day of the festival itself and does, I think, show ‘local people, young and old, having fun’.

Although it’s a busy photograph, I am taken by the man at the right hand end. I like it when one of the people I am photographing notices me and looks my way. It makes it clear that there is no view from nowhere. The next photograph makes the same point but I imagine that the little boy in the centre also has the independence of imagination to look in a different direction to those around him.

I like to take photographs of people that are not portraits; where they don’t have a chance to ‘put on a face’ for you. This photograph of a group of girls is probably not what they would choose to use for social media purposes but I think it says something about their relationship all the same. Similarly, the photograph of the young man, on his own and at the margins of the event probably wouldn’t be as honest if he had ‘smiled for the camera’.

The brief was to show people having fun although not everyone did, of course. I don’t know what the story here was but the story in the picture that follows is clearer. It doesn’t much matter what a notice says when you are in need of a sit down and a fag.

Similarly, there is really only one way to see what is at the bottom of your bag of sweets and most of us can recall having the ‘cat’s lick’ tidy up; small but familiar moments of childhood experience.

Previous generations of photographers have given more time to capturing childhood and I was able to pay homage to Roger Mayne and take some photographs of young people playing street games, as he did, even if not exactly in the street. It’s rare to see children playing in this way anymore which is a pity when you see how much fun it can be.

These and other pictures have since been used to promote the work of Glofa Navigation Cyf on-line and will be used to illustrate an important report to funders later in the year.

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