Pontypool RFC – A scrapbook

Time for a new piece of work and a different way of working. I am currently in the process of researching a project on Pontypool rugby club, a Principality Premiership club in South Wales, based in a very nice park not far from my flat.

Why Pontypool, or Pooler as they are known?

Well it is because they, like most Welsh clubs, actually represent their towns and the people in them, they are part of the community and visa versa. They are not an arbitrary prescribed region, they are not a multi national sporting experience and nor are they a business that puts shareholders and investors above supporters. In short they still hold some of the soul that went in football the day Sky showed up with all that cash.

The other thing that draws me is that I know little about the club, the town or the people being an outsider (not that that is a problem down here) and it is this sense of the unknown that is behind the intended output for the project; a scrapbook!

The idea is to approach Pooler as a child would, to be a hoarder of information and experiences and to keep all these little details in a scrapbook. However it is not just my world that will be included, I am looking to record interviews with others about the club, asking people to photograph their own personal match days, and I shall also aim to make a typological survey of the club (tour plaques, shirts, international representation mementos, tickets). Add to this newspaper reports, found photos and all kinds of mini kleptomania and this could be a lot of fun.

And hard work for the designer I get to work with creating the whole book.

I am in the process of talking to the people in charge of Pooler and I only hope they are a fraction as excited by this project as I am!

If you want to see what my influences for this then just check out these guys, Donovan Wylie, Bill Burke and Julien Germain. All slightly different, all fantastic!

Oh and here is a random image from my trip today, how can you not love a place where even the benches are Pooler!

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Further work in procress

More work alongside the industrial and nature theme I am playing with at the moment. More again soon, but further shoots looking difficult with the weather for now.

The Grid project lives!

Still with the landscapes and still with the industry, shoot what makes you happy was last years lesson that I have forgotten for most of this term. With this work I can justify my existence and take arms against a sea of troubles, this work is personal and part of the long game.

As some may notice I have done the dirty and used digital then converted to black and white. I swear that was not the intention on inception, it came in the edit I promise.

Any road, thought, comment and opinions welcome. More work to be done, I have an abandoned reservoir and some brick works to do yet.

Have a half decent New Year, may the new decade bring you want you deserve.

26 Roundabouts

As influenced by the great Ed Ruscha and his fantastic piece, ’26 Gasoline Stations’.

Is it contempory?

Is it conceptual?

Do I care?

Have a happy Christmas and see you in January.

Plan B

Brief intro into project plan b, I have just gained a slight fascination into cricket grounds that have been completely shut down and boarded up for the winter. So alive and buzzing during the Summer and yet so closed off and desolate during the Winter.

Early days yet, I’ll see where it takes me and what the outcomes are.

Further work in progress from the Grid

Some further sketches from the grid project (it is yet to get a real name), these two highlight what I am looking to capture and also what I am not looking for. It is a constant battle as what looks good in situ might not come across on film and visa versa.

The first image is a failure, on site the idea of the water treatment plant being swallowed by the woods, and more importantly the sky and lake from which it gains its reason to be, was a sound one. However in production the plant is too obvious in the frame as it is part of the skyline which makes it very separate from the woods, lake and sky. 

 

 

 

This image is much better, in terms of the project. The houses are visible but not obvious at first and nor are they frame hogging. Here the environment is the key player, despite the major road and mass of housing, nature resumes control of the area promptly, cutting away the modern industrial world.

 

The Grid Project

Live is all about stretching briefs to breaking point and this project is no different, so settle down and I’ll explain the evolution of this one. Or how I got one brief and thought around it enough to do what I wanted anyway.

The basic premise is that we are given a grid reference and off we pop to make a project within it. I got Cwmbran. It is a new town, lots of concrete, so I thought about a project on new towns. However that sort of died with research and time and a new idea was born.

Due to the strangeness that exists in most photographers I have an apprechiation of the form in industry, see the Bechers, but also really enjoy the outdoors and the beauty of this countries national parks. South Wales appears to regually cover my enjoyment of both and I looked to cover this in some way.

The theory goes like this, at the southern end we have Port Talbot (pronounced as one word), Swansea, Cardiff and Newport and to the north we have the Brecon Beacons National Park, in between we have a gentel mix of the two and this is where I wish to place myself for this project.

I want to look at the places in between, those places here that you stand in and think ‘why, oh why did they have to build this industrial mess in such a nice valley’. However rather than photograph them from within I intend to get out onto the sceanry that they apparently defoul, and from here make a picture that shows that nature, in the end, is all powerfull. When all things are put into place the hills, woods, sea and sky swollow up the industry and cast it in the role of bit part player in the local vistas.

A positive project on the effects of industry in the landscape. Not often that happens.

These are some sketch images of the project so far as I see it.