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The Guardian
20-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Down in the valleys: the wonders of Wales
For nearly 30 years Ken Grant has photographed the south Wales valleys. The title Cwm means valley or corrie in Welsh and steep-sided valleys form the backbone of the images in his new book. Grant embarked quietly on this series in the mid-1990s, in parallel to his more widely seen photographs depicting urban working-class life in his native Liverpool. Although visually dissimilar, both sets of work are connected by the themes of labour and endurance. Cwm: The Fair Country by Ken Grant is available to purchase from RRB Books Grant's images record the gradual post-industrial transition of the landscape and the communities weathering change – watched by the steadfast ponies who have populated the hills for millennia The valleys are typically aligned by nature in parallel, running north to south. With the advent of industry in the area in the 19th century, urban development began to snake in ribbons along the floors of the valleys Wild ponies inhabit many of the landscapes and have witnessed what industry did to the Welsh valleys and its people over centuries Grant's photographs – taken in locations across the region including Beaufort, Ebbw Vale and Fochriw – show the green of the hills disrupted by artery-like roads, concrete bridges and rows of workers' terraced houses Ken Grant: 'When my father began to talk through ways to settle affairs, as old men tired of it all sometimes do, I told him I needed nothing. I already had the tools he'd given me when I first proved I could carry a job. I had no use for suits, or shirts bought in sales but never worn, and why would I hold on to family photographs that had lain in drawers across a working life that could never pause to look at such things? I asked for nothing, except for a painting that, steady and watching, had sat above his mantelpiece all my life' '… Dapple-bruised Welsh horses, painted in a loose herd, are imagined beneath a sky that promises rain. That rain will come, and the horses will surely bear it again. They must know it will pass. They tend to tolerate these things. Didn't their benign strength free children from the push and drag of mines? Weren't they compliant through filthy wars, harnessed and led by the promise of pasture and release? And didn't some look up from grazing when strikes brought fracture and silence as the work ended?' 'There are quick growing forests now above the deep vein seams of south Wales, with spruce neck lacing villages cast free of a purpose that once shaped them' 'Near Beaufort, Fochriw and Ebbw Vale, where horses drift in teams, the marks of industry are easily missed in the shade of hills that rise behind institutes and towns that, for all the squalls that pass through, persevere' 'There's wonder in why a painter chooses shadow over sunlight and the kind of pleasing prospect that might comfort a home better. There must be reason in the depiction of waiting, of weathering and tolerance, of the still hereness in all of this' 'There's tenderness in the stories about the loved and expired that find a late path through shallow breathing to the closest of company, watched only by the horses, who are still there after everything, and who know all there is to know about belonging, the end of days and occasional rain' Collectively the photographs in Cwm create a layered account of a much photographed region, foregrounding beauty, scars and the life that persists despite the weight of an industry's passing. Read more about this image here
The Guardian
30-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘People have walked through here for centuries': the rhythms of the Welsh valleys in pictures
Ken Grant's Cwm: A Fair Country, a collection of nearly 30 years of landscape photography in the South Walian valleys, begins with a moving prologue. It mentions a painting he's known since his Liverpudlian childhood, still sitting above his 92-year-old father's mantelpiece: 'Dapple-bruised Welsh horses, painted in a loose herd, are imagined beneath a sky that promises rain.' From 1998, on commutes from Liverpool to the University of Wales, Newport (where he led a documentary photography degree), he noticed similar horses – completely by coincidence. 'I didn't seek them out at first, but on my drives, I soon got aware that they were there. Sometimes up a valley's road, you'd see packs of 40 or 50.' Some were descendants of animals once used in mining; other herds would have pre-dated industry; either way, they now roam wild and free. Grant's horses sit, lie, nuzzle each other and look directly into his lens. He became struck by the creatures' hardiness in all seasons. 'They're beautiful, observant, built to last – they let things happen around them. They became a loose metaphor for me for thinking about communities in these areas – communities built around a particular purpose which is not active any more in any shape or form, but which carries on, having endured all those upheavals, and the shifts that have taken place in the land.' The horses in Cwm (the name of a mining village Grant photographs and a Welsh word for valley or steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley) act like solid anchors among images of striking environments. Harsh hills, often pillaged by industry, sit behind pale, pastel rows of terrace houses. A photography studio sits in an old building, its front wall soaked with stormwater. An old playground sits quietly alongside the site of a demolished steelworks. There are signs of development – new redbrick houses and road improvement projects – between the battered allotments and ruined buildings. 'It struck me how strongly these roads are built to take people past a place,' Grant says. Moving on from Newport in 2013, he has to-and-froed between Wales and Liverpool ever since, often returning to the same places – like the village of Beaufort, named after a duke who originally owned the land, and Manmoel Common outside Ebbw Vale, high on a ridge, near abandoned quarries. Mid-century Czech photographer Josef Sudek inspired this approach. 'There's a lovely phrase of his – 'rush slowly' – about how you're rewarded by staying with subjects over time, seeing any kinds of changes or shifts, or slow dismantlings or initiations. You're made aware that something's still happening, or you're reminded to find something again.' Other influences include the American photojournalists W Eugene Smith and Robert Frank, and people closer to his experience in Wales, such as West Wales-based photographer Paul Cabuts and photographic historian Ian Walker. The book's subtitle is a nod to Alexander Cordell's bestselling 1959 novel Rape of the Fair Country, about the iron-making communities of Nantyglo and Blaenavon before the Chartist uprisings in Wales. Best known as a photographer of people within places (in series such as New Brighton Revisited and Shankly), Grant talks warmly about those he has met in these communities ('there is a beautiful temperament and decency in these people'). He's also done a project simultaneously in the area about pub football teams ('It's as much about football as it is about men navigating being part of something that their dads were part of'). The only people we see in Cwm are walkers, on the edges of frames, often in startling landscapes. 'People use and walk through these places just because they've walked through them for centuries,' Grant says. He also loves the vivid colours of the land, the saturated browns, yellows and greens that partly come from the wetness of the Welsh weather. This resilience and richness, he says, is part of everyday life. 'I've got a lot to be thankful for in Wales,' he adds. He's now living back in Wirral, near his father, but his daughter lives in Cardiff, so he still has a reason to take strange, cross-country diversions. 'The beautiful, gentle landscapes and full-blown mountains in which people still live – it's still incredible, even in the winter, when it's quite tough. But in the time of year we're in now, I love watching how everything comes alive.' Cwm speaks to the same, startling spirit. Cwm: A Fair Country by Ken Grant is published by RRB Photobooks (£45)
