Tug of WAR

Waiting

Waiting Room

a place to wait

Whats On

Hereford Photography Festival: The Cattle Breeders

So spring seems to have finally sprung; the trees are budding up; the pipe behind the toilet has been dusted and the cattle are shedding their winter coats. The time has finally come to start taking photos of Hereford cattle. This trio (the Ford Abbey Farm boys) kindly posed for me on Easter weekend. More to follow...

In Living Memory

Dolly Littlejohn

The day we met…

It was our 60th anniversary on 20th August, he died the week before. Yes, that was sad, but there we are.

When he started coming in he was paying for a nine-pence seat, I think. We sold one and nine penny seats and nine pence seats, the Gaiety cinema it was then, in Cardiff. It's a bingo hall now.

I was an usherette, I used to show them all to their seats. The one day these two boys came in, a nice boy and his little mate. They had two nine penny tickets and I said you will have to wait a bit, there aren't any nine-penny seats left, and he said aren't there any of the others? I could pay the difference. I said Oh no no, you can have them this time but don't you go telling anyone else! So I let them have the seats, that’s how it started.

Connie

They came across the fields…

They would turn up some time around the middle of August, I would see them all walking across the stubble fields towards our farm. In a gang, the gypsies came.

I would shout to my father they’re here, they’re here!

I don’t know where they came from but it was so exciting.

They worked all day long, cutting back the hedges; they were hard men. My father would give them the barn to sleep in and my mother would make them a pot of stew. I remember sitting down with them, there with my sister. Their stories were so wild.

Sheila

They said I was a witch…

Father was a very nice, quiet man. He never hit me once… but he did call me a little bugger when I was just gone four and a half. At half past nine that night I went into the shed where he made the cider. I had forgotten what he had said that morning, never turn that bloody tap on! I remember how lovely it tasted. He would give me and my sister half a cup every year.

In the June before he died I was in the garden of our neighbour, they had a lovely everlasting moss rose tree. When I picked a flower from the tree the breeze changed direction and a loud wind arose for twenty three minutes, the voice said YOUR FATHER WILL DIE, NOVEMBER THE 7^TH, 3PM and that’s when he died. I didn’t tell anyone else but my blind sister, my brothers hated my fortune telling.

They said I was a witch but I don't mind that.

The Gardeners Cottage

I have recently been doing loads of work in the Wye Valley. Photography isn't my day job: rope access, building conservation, stone masonry, geo technical inspections and a bit of hard to reach weeding takes me through to the weekend when usually I get my camera out. I took this photograph at lunch time a few weeks ago. It's part of a ruined stately home called Piersfield house. It's built into the walls of a huge overgrown victorian walled garden. I took the photo with a pinhole camera and thought it could go onto the blog. An indirect clue as to what a really get up to.

Memory

Some photographs from a project which I began whilst at Uni. They were taken from conversations I had with them about their lives. I am hoping to get some funding to finish the project so I thought I would post them up while I wait the funders verdict to my application.

Chris the Farmer: Art

Mr Brown: Whats that Chris?

Chris: Oh. A reprentation of a pig.

Over Looking the Wye

Yessss. Another little commission has just come up teaching pinhole photography to people living in the Wye Valley. The aim of the project is to encourage fresh perspectives of the historically rich area using the long exposure of the pinhole technique. Workshops to begin in May. I will post up some of the results then so again, stay tuned. Nice!

State of the Estate, Penpont Exhabition 2009

Early 2009 I was asked along with 18 other artists to take part in an arts show at the Penpont Estate near Brecon. As the title and theme of the show was Stad yr Ystad (State of the Estate), I decided to involve the local farming community who have traditionally been the backbone to the country estate. Over a period of a couple of months I visited each farmer to collect their stories from a life on the land. I then made these photographs to accompany them and displayed it all in the exhibition.

Hereford Photography Festival 2010

I am pleased to announce that I have recently been given a commission by the Hereford Photography Festival to carry out a community arts project involving local breeders of the Hereford cow. I seem to have become something of a farm photographer.

My hope is to reference the history of farm animal portraiture: using a traditional format to reveal something about contemporary attitudes to farming. I hope to put some control of the photographs to the farmers minds. I can't sure how the farmers will respond to my idea, especially in the wake of this hard weather. Maybe they will all just look miserable, which is fine.

New Barn Farm