Jon Windsor: The Geological, Economic and Personal Mapping of a Valley

Jon Windsor is next on the blog with a personal take on the Ebbw Valley of South Wales, and the way that geological, industrial and personal history are woven into the fabric of an area that has been devestated on environmental, community and economic levels over the years. It's a touching story where this devastation is marked onto the skin of the valley, and is remembered with a mix of nostalgia, anger and despair, but with a little bit of contemporary joyfulness thrown into the mix. I love the fact that the places where the contour lines get close, there are perpendicular lines made by walkers, bmx-ers and bikers, a different kind of mapping. 

Below is what Jon has to say about the project.

I was born in Risca at the bottom of the Ebbw Valley. It’s an area of former industry, an area that my family worked in during the glories of the mining era. My father worked in the Celynen South Mine until Margaret Thatcher took away his job following the miner’s strike in 1985.

After that he worked in construction, he drove a taxi, and now he works in retail. In a way, his life mirrors the changes that have happened in the valley. From being a site associated with coal and industry, it is now a site associated with deprivation, EU-funded infrastructure projects, and the zero hours economy.

Although my family is steeped in the history of the Valleys, I didn’t know much about it. My life was based more in Risca, Newport and Cardiff. This project is my attempt to reconnect with the nostalgia and longing for the past, as expressed by my family history, and the way the area has become a reflection of the new valleys; a shadow economy that is a mix of new industries, commuter housing and economic initiatives that never quite happened.

For this project, I followed the the old Ebbw Valley Railway line from its start in Ebbw vale to its end in Newport docks. The line was at one point used to carry freight from Ebbw Vale steelworks to Newport docks between 1962 and 2002, stopping at each town throughout the valley along the way. Using this track as a guide, EBBW uses present day photographs from each of these towns, coupled with Ordinance Survey maps from the time such industries were operating as a means of examining in detail how the landscape has changed over the last 50 years.

Contact: jwindsor94@googlemail.com

See more work here.

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You can see this and other documentary work in London opening 16th June at Seen Fifteen Gallery, Peckham. We'd love to see you there so come and say hello!

And if you do have any spare cash and want to be a patron of some truly great photographers, go to the Kickstarter Page here. We need a little money!

Zsofi Bohm: Growing up in Uranium City

Next up from Documentary Photography at Cardiff, which is where I teach, is Zsofi Bohm.

In the UK we have an election coming up in which the ruling Conservative Party are guaranteed to cut wages, kill free health care, destroy housing and make education even more unaffordable. 

They will make you poor, they will make your children poor, they will make your parents poor. Unless you're incredibly rich and then you'll get richer on the cries of other people's suffering. Who could possibly vote for them? 

It's a similar question that Zsofi asks about the fantastically named Uranium City, a city where Zsofi grew up. It used to be the centre of Hungary's uranium industry, a model town, a place where the workers were models of the modern socialist state. It was also a town that would kill its inhabitants, a toxic city that (like the Conservative Party) would poison you from within... enough, this is what Zsofi has to say about it.

URANIUM CITY (2017)

Zsofi Bohm

In Hungary, uranium mining began in the 1950s in the Mecsek Hills, and lasted almost fifty years. The aim was to support the supply of the country's first atomic plant and to contribute to the Soviet Union’s ambition of becoming a nuclear superpower.

An entire modern district was built for those who worked in the mine industry, which still today is called Uranium City. The quality of life, regardless of the physically challenging work, was promising in comparison with that of the average citizen of the Eastern Bloc. The tallest building in Uranium City is a 17-storey block of flats. My grandparents live on the 9th floor.

When I was 15 I moved in to the 9th floor to live with my grandparents. I instantly knew there was something strange about the place. The people were so proud and acted like they were real aristocrats. But to the 15-year-old me, it was obvious this wasn’t the case. It was also obvious that this was a people living in denial. The industry was dying, the town was dying, and because of the radioactivity, the people were dying too. 

This death continued after the fall of communism in 1989,  when uranium mining was abruptly discontinued because of the high production costs. This created serious economic problems for the area and a rise in unemployment. In addition to the financial hardships there were also serious health problems for those that worked in the mine, due to radiation contamination; many died young from lung cancer. 

However, there is a common denial of radioactivity amongst the inhabitants, including my own grandparents. The denial extends to medical records. There seems to be an increased cancer risk because of the uranium mining, but because the medical records are not open to scrutiny, nobody knows. So people stay ignorant about the real health risks. They like it that way. 

The people of Uranium City have always been grateful to the former USSR and its system. The nuclear industry not only pulled them out of financial insecurity, but also elevated their social status into a privileged and respected position. Being a uranium miner and living in Uranium City was prestigious and something to be proud of.

See more of Zsofi's work here. 

And contact her here: zsofibohm@gmail.com

Follow Documentary Photography's 3rd Years at Two Eyes Serve a Movement on Instagram here

And see their work on show opening 16th June at Seen Fifteen Gallery, Peckham. We'd love to see you there so come and say hello!

Last Post from Documentary Photography: Lua Riberia's Noises in the Blood

Last up from the Documentary Photography Course at the University of South Wales (formerly known as Newport) is Lua Ribeira's Noises in the Blood. 

This is a look at Dancehall Culture from a perspective that preserves the ritual, the mythical, and the sexual in a very direct manner. 

Last year, Lua won the Firecracker Photographic Grant (which is open to entries now) for an earlier incarnation of Noises in the Blood, a project which has significantly got a thumbs up from Professor Carolyn Cooper who wrote the book from which Lua found her title - and you can see Professor Carolyn Cooper's Noises in the Blood here.  

'Noises in the Blood, is an interpretation of the Jamaican Dancehall ritual. The work reflects on the richness of this Afro Caribbean form of folklore, currently developing in the United Kingdom. My intention is to explore the complexity and importance of this cultural expression in relation to a Western perspective, embracing the impossibility of fully understanding it, as starting point of a greater dialogue.'

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Daragh Soden's Young Dubliners

 Next up from the Documentary Photography Course at the University of South Wales (formerly known as Newport) is work by Daragh Soden. Daragh is a multi-talented photographer from Dublin. These images are from his series, Young Dubliners, but he also makes more conceptual work that questions the role of the photographer and the assumptions of documentary.

Young Dubliners already has a life of its own; it will be shown in Dublin later in the year as part of a wider project on Irish youth, and Daragh is working on how to integrate text and image through pieces of his fictional writing based on his own experiences growing up in the city.

This is what he says about the work.

"Young Dubliners is a celebration of the unique character of Dublin's youth, the place where I grew up. During a time of time austerity, the young people who would inherit the consequences of actions taken by the powers that be are championed in empowering portraits."

"It's one of the things about adolescence, everyone goes through it. Yet, it's different for everyone. Everyone is dealt a unique set of problems and challenges, some much more so than others."

"The young Dubliners in the pictures are all united in their youth, but are divided in Dublin. Around the figure in the foreground, the extent of social division in Dublin is apparent."

 A man was cutting the grass when we ran down the big hill to the chipper at lunch time. When we got to the road the sweet smell of the grass changed to tarmac. Dylan’s da was there, raking the hot black stuff.

-Is that your da Dylan?

-Yeah, he said looking down at the ground.

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Jessica Hardy: 'These are all fictions of me'

Next up from the Documentary Photography course at the University of South Wales is Jessica Hardy with her project, The Running of the Tap. 

This project is very much in progress. It was partly inspired by the work of Laia Abril, with references to Rosy Martin and Jo Spence (who Jess wrote in her final paper - the link between research and practice coming good ), but most of it is coming from Jess's own experience with bulimia. 

It's an intensely personal project, with words from diaries, from school year books, reflections on former relationships and friendships, both uplifting and toxic all coming into play. 

Those elements and those words are still waiting to be resolved (which is difficult because they are quite brutal words), but the images relive key chapters from Jess's life, chapters that connect to the development of her bulimia and her ability to confront it through its causes. 

This is Jess's Statement:

‘Through the medium of visual reframing we can begin to understand that images we hold of ourselves are often the embodiment of particular traumas, fears, losses, hopes and desires’ (Spence, J, 1988) 

Recreation of memories allow one to reach a deeper understanding of themselves by exploring their thoughts and feelings attached to each moment. I now presently have Bulimia, an eating disorder that involves purging after eating. I believe that this could be linked to my past experiences, so through using the technique of recreating memories within photography I learned to help myself understand and accept what has happened to me to move on from it. After constructing my past selves I then worked with creating my present selves to understand where I am now in my life and again try to gain an understanding and acceptance of who I am.

‘These are all ‘fictions’ of me – as are all photographs. Each shows different ways of ‘seeing’ myself.’ (Spence, J, 1988)

Rosy Martin writes: ‘By acknowledging aspects of myself and my past, which I might otherwise hide, or see as my ‘shadow’ side, I have freed myself from internalized restrictions and oppressions, and have come to accept myself as I am.’ (Spence, J, 1988)

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Rocco Venezia's Nekyia: A Journey Into the Land of the Dead

Next up on the overview of work from students on the Documentary Photography course at the University of South Wales is Nekyi by Rocco Venezia.

Essentially Nekyia is the idea of the journey of recovery of the self by flipping the conscious and the unconscious mind and travelling to those dark inner spaces where the real monsters lie. It's a trip to the underworld of the self in other words.

For Rocco, the symbolic recovery of the self, his trip to the underworld involved a literal trip to the River Acheron in Greece, the river that in Greek mythology separates the living world from the Underworld, from the Kingdom of Hades.

And of course it's taking place in Greece, which is undergoing its own crisis of self. So there is a mix of the personal, the symbolic, the mythical and the political. It's a work in progress, but it's ambitious and there's a story that is being told. It'll make a great book (and I've got my name down for a copy because he's making a bunch for the end of year show)!

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Molly Kempster and the Marginalisation of Women in Agriculture

all pictures by Molly Kempster

So I gave my last lecture in Room H8c in Caerleon a couple of days ago and yesterday I gave my last tutorials to third years there before the world's oldest Documentary Photography Course completes its move to Cardiff.  And so, as we head towards the end of year shows, it gets me a little bit sentimental.

After giving fifty odd lectures to these third years in the previous two years, the same number of seminars and numerous tutorials, it is a pleasure to see them write about their work and talk about their work and make their work (which I rarely get to see because I teach history and theory) in a way that goes beyond the content they have been given.

It's the idea that they have gone from having images, theories, ideas and histories put into their world to becoming people who are creating their own worlds. So hearing them talk is like receiving something back from their world - like getting a lecture, a seminar, a tutorial in return, somethng that isn't just theoretical in a distant way or image-based in a cold way, but something that connects back to the real world and examines how it has been shaped and understood over the years.

I've heard about the history of soil and how it has been mapped and shaped by the politics of land use, I've heard about Greek mythology and a photographer's personal journey to the depths of hell, about somebody who has learnt to live on the land, to fish and hunt, about the link between the heart and the land, about the body and ritual, and then some more.

In keeping with this, the next few posts will feature a series of works that are just coming to fruition for the end of year show. All these are from Documentary Photography course at USW and you can follow them at

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First up is Molly Kempster. 'Blue Bib and Braces' portrays women working in agriculture in the UK. What I find most fascinating about the project, which is a straightforward documentary, is the way it links in to the history of women in agriculture, and the way they have been marginalised and written out of visual and social history since the dawn of the British agrarian revolution. Nothing happens by accident and visual representation counts. This is what Molly says about the project (which is still ongoing).

‘Blue Bib and Braces’ is a photographic project that represents a number of extraordinary women from the south of England, who continue to defy the gender stereotype and myth that surrounds the farming industry by actively participating in job roles within agriculture, alike those of men. The existence of these women is presented through a series of uniform portraits in order to evoke the feeling of hardship and emotion that accompanies these job titles. Women have, and will continue to be the ‘backbone’ of the agrarian industry.

(and if you want to study on the Documentary Photography course, remember it's called  Documentary Photography, not anything else. There's a reason I say this. You'd be surprised!)

So Farewell then Room H8c Newport (aka Caerleon)

So farewell then Room H8c, base of Documentary Photography in Newport for the last 20 years. I gave my last lecture in there today - from next year it's all Cardiff where Documentary Photography will still continue bigger, better and stronger back in an urban setting!

The choice for the final slideshow was either Ester VonPlon's Requiem




...or Mark Power's Lambada.




Sad or Happy. Death or Rebirth. We went for Happy!

Bye Bye Newport. We'll all be Port Forever.

Happy Graduation Show

Happy Graduation Shows to everybody who is graduating in the UK, Ireland or wherever you are, especially if you're from Newport. The work from up top is by Sophie Skipper whose work you can see at the Documentary Photography show at Jacobs Antique Market in Cardiff. This place has an amazing roof garden and check out the stuffed puppies in the ground floor stall. Classy! Opening tomorrow night.


The work below is by Harry Rose who will be showing his work in the Photographic Art Graduation show at City Campus in Newport. See more work at Leaving the Building here. Opens this evening.

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And the work below is by Victor Hensel-Coe who will be showing at the Embassy Tea Gallery, SE1 in London. Private View is from 2pm - 6pm and I'm looking forward to seeing the work up there.