Kindly use this forum to discuss issues and thoughts related to the visual history of Senghenydd
Blog
News From New Zealand: Both Bad and Good
So I started the Saturday morning of October 15, 2011 with a pot of coffee and fired up the Tivo box to watch Wales play France in the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. It's actual start time here live in New Jersey, USA was 03.45, so I recorded the game and made sure to instruct my rabid, rugby loving father (who would be watching it live on TV from where he now lives, in California) to please not try to reach me with any emails or text messages until I'd got to watch it myself. Well, what a fantastic, compelling, amazing, and ultimately, sickening and harrowing game it turned out to be. Following the ejection of their captain the Welsh played 3/4 of the match with only 14 men and should therefore have been well-beaten. Instead, they played like courageous, never-say-die, heroes. I confess my eyes welled up a number of times during the match as that brave, exhausted team battled to the final whistle to defy the odds. Ultimately, they fell one point short, losing 8-9–the worst possible news for me from New Zealand. In a strange and welcome twist news from the Southern hemisphere a few hours later took a tack for the better. I was checking my inbox and came across an email from a New Zealander, Carole Adamson. Attached to the email were 4 postcards from the Benton series that I'd never seen before, numbers 8, 14, 17 and 22. What a thrill! She had filled in the missing pieces of the historic postcard collection. Carole explained that her grandfather, William Cowdrey, was a miner working in the next valley, and had sent the postcards to his fiancee. I have now uploaded them to the '1913 Explosion Gallery' for everyone to see. I thanked Carole for the pictures and explained how amusing I found the extremes of emotions I had felt for news from New Zealand on a single day. She replied, "Yes, I rather think the majority of Kiwis were rooting for the Welsh last night." Thank you Carole. And go All Blacks in the final!
A Wonderful Trip Home
I have recently returned to the USA from South Wales where I had one of my most memorable visits ever. I had the pleasure of making a number of new friends in my research of photographs for this site. I would particularly like to thank the superb staff of the Glamorgan Record Office, who were so utterly welcoming and friendly during my day-long visit with them. I enjoyed coffee and a fascinating conversation with the wonderful Susan Edwards, who heads up the operation, and was so encouraging about this project. She gave me so many ideas and contacts that it will take me months to work through and follow up on them all. I'd also like to thank Geoff Edwards, who works for Susan, who so kindly responded to my initial request, and gave me a tour of the facility, plus a valuable primer on how to best conduct my research. It is people like these who keep our history alive, and if not for their diligence and passion, our world would be a lesser place, one that future generations would know less about.
No less a note of thanks goes to Tony Woolway, the Chief Photography Archivist for Media Wales, who oversees the archives of newspapers such as the Western Mail and Echo, plus dozens of other community newspapers. I arrived at 9.30 one morning, and Tony, the ever-smiling Cardiff City supporter, showed me to a desk of folders of photographs and press cuttings he had so kindly arranged which had me immersed for many hours. I now have literally hundreds of photographs to go through and collate and upload which will take many months to do, but I do now get the feeling that I have the ingredients to make something truly memorable. Stay tuned.
What a Shock.....
So I just got back from a few days visit to the village, the purpose of my trip being to research some material for this site and to make some new photographs. I hadn't been back for a year, and as I drove up the incline of Commercial Street I noticed the traffic was moving a little slower than usual, and I soon found out the reason. It was May 12, and the Square was in the throes of construction, in a state that I have never seen it before. I am not precisely sure what the plans are--resurfacing and redirecting of traffic flow, I heard--but I do hope they resist the urge to overly modernize the place. I always felt the Square needed nothing more than fresh paint. I guess we'll wait and see......
W. Benton: My unknown inspiration
If there's one person who inspired me to start this website, it would have to be someone I know very little about. His (or her) name was W. Benton, the photographer who make the amazing series of postcard photographs from the 1913 explosion. Without my appreciation of those images, I don't think that I would have had the foundation to base an entire website on the photographic history of a such a small, Welsh village. In documenting the tragedy, this unsung hero of photographic history has made some of the finest examples of early 20th century photojournalism. I would love to know more about the person, about the photographs (where are the original negatives?), and about other photographs he may have made. The Senghenydd series are the only photographs of his that I've come across. All we know is what is handwrittten on the negative of each of the postcards: "W. Benton, 138 George Street, Glasgow." Does anyone have any knowledge or thoughts to solve the mystery of the man?
Philip Jones Griffiths RIP
One of the most important figures in the history of Welsh photography died on Wednesday. Philip Jones Griffiths, born in Rhuddian, was a member of the Magnum Photo agency, and was a war photographer most closely associated with his ground-breaking work in the Vietnam war. This may seem a little off topic for this website whose focus is Senghenydd, but bear with me, there is a connection, I had met with Philip on occasions in the course of my work, and had a tentative plan to meet with him again during his next visit to New York in a couple of months. Among other, more important things, I had wanted to mention this modest project on Senghenydd to him, and listen to what he had to say. I hoped that our shared mutual memories of the very unique thing that is Welsh village life might have forged us a closer bond.
Alas, Philip lost his long battle with cancer and never made it back to New York.
I will forever wonder what this giant of photojournalism might have thought of my little project during our meeting that never happened. Here is a link to an obit and an edit of his work that I did for Newsweek yesterday. http://www.newsweek.com/id/124403
Photograph courtesy of Magnum Photos
What Next?
Welcome to Senghenydd.net. Here is the first blog entry. I am collecting original photographs and postcards to document the visual history of the village. Can anyone help me any leads, ideas or input to get started?