New Book

 Just out... 'City Stories' - Photographs of Cardiff, 1969-1977

52 pages, 210mm x 210mm perfect bound book. 

Available in the UK from: https://petedavisphotography.bigcartel.com/

Front cover

CITY STORIES

These photographs were part of a series I made in the late 1960's, and early 1970's. They represent random slices of life from the Cardiff streets at that time. They were originally made with no particular project or strategy in mind, other than I recognised that the city as a whole was in a state of flux and it seemed appropriate to document this. Sections of the old, immediate post-war environment and elements of inner city life were, for a while more at least, existing alongside the newer surroundings and atmospheres which were replacing them. Fifty years on from when many of these photographs were made, they have acquired another dimension and now appear as documents and time capsules of another age.

Page 9

As I went about my work as a photographer in the city centre every day, those many transient and sometimes surreal moments that make up the life of a city began to fascinate me. As Garry Winogrand used to assert, 'I photograph things to see what they look like when photographed'. Later, as the images began to accumulate I became aware of how the indigenous population navigated and inhabited this particular evolving urban landscape and environment. While many of these actions were inadvertent on their part, they created, for me at least, many imaginary narratives about their thoughts and lives.

Page 11

The photographs of Splott, where I was brought up and went to school, were made at the time that the main employer in the area - the steelworks - was closing, and the area being pulled apart and re-developed. This was a substantial part of the city not just in transition but about to disappear altogether. Conscious of the very major changes there and the upheaval to the many residents at the time, I would return on numerous occasions to record the street life and the gradual decay and destruction of the urban landscape that I had regarded as home until the mid 1960’s. 

Page 18

Ideas and attitudes to creative work alter as time progresses and reactions to particular images change as they are viewed in a different historical and social context from the ones in which they were created. This applies to my own reviewing of this work for its revival exhibition over forty years since they were last exhibited, in addition to the opinions of others. Accordingly, there are a number of images here that I have ‘rediscovered’ that were never previously exhibited or published before. 

Page 43

Much of the work here may appear to concentrate on the more prosaic elements of the environment. However, photography has the ability to not just represent but to reveal and re-present these in a form that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. Bruce Gilden has noted that ‘you find out what’s interesting by photographing it’. I have always loved almost every aspect of life and our environment and it has always been my intention to capture those seemingly mundane moments and surroundings that might pass unnoticed unless observed and captured by a sympathetic eye. 

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