One of the privileges of my position is that I get to visit artists in the process of creation; I get to see the manipulation of raw materials or the development of ideas which, for me, is often the most exciting part of the process. Everything that exists in an artist’s studio contains the potential to be something or nothing, depending on the vision, skill and influence of the artist.
On Tuesday I went out to visit Jon Pountney, a freelance photographer and one of the men behind the Warwick Hall artist residence/recording space in Gabalfa. Jon’s been working on a project called Cardiff before Cardiff, which we’re projecting in its current form in the Angorfa foyer here at the Centre.
Originally created by photographer Keith S. Robertson in the early 80’s, a body of work – and it is a substantial body of over 250 prints and more than 1,000 negatives – was unearthed by Jon as he set about renovating Warwick Hall. It documents Cardiff around 1983/4, or perhaps more specifically, it documents the people that made this one of the world’s preeminent industrial cities before the decline of the docks and the re-birth (or re-branding) into Cardiff that we know today.
As Jon started to leaf through the stack of prints I fell silent. The volume, the quality and the breadth of subjects that Keith managed to capture is overwhelming. It was a genuine privilege to be able to see such an important collection, as near as possible to the way they were discovered by Jon. It was almost as if I had discovered them myself.
Jon talked me through some of the stories, his eyes, seasoned by his own professional photography work, picking out the details that I may not have seen. The stories that he has collected thus far range from straight facts to almost heart-wrenching melancholy.
It’s a body of work that carries significance across a number of subjects; historically it documents a city in great detail, socially it shows how far Cardiff has (or in some cases hasn’t) changed over the past 25 – 30 years and moving forward it begs questions about where the people are and what they’ve done in the preceding years.
I’ve made a short film with Jon, talking about the project, some of the stories that have arisen from various press coverage and how he intends to continue the project. I hope to see this project grow and develop, so that in another 30 years someone can discover the work of Jon Pountney and Keith S. Robertson and add their name to this list.
Please take a look at the website and, if you can, contribute your stories. http://www.cardiffbeforecardiff.tumblr.com
No comments:
Post a Comment