More platinum

Preparing for a new exhibition in June, I have been making new B&W work in the woodlands of Strata Florida Abbey in Ceredigion, mid Wales. 

I have photographed there before some years ago as part of my 'Wildwood' exhibition. Those were colour images but the new work will address some different ideas and invite a different response from the viewers. 

Strata Florida, 2004

The new work will be presented as platinum prints, made from the 10" x 8" negatives. 

As I'm getting older, I have noticed that carrying a heavy 10" x 8" camera with even heavier tripod on my shoulders, plus a backpack with holders, lenses, meter, notebook etc. was getting more difficult. Particularly over rough, uneven and sometimes very soggy ground. So after over 60 years of lugging large format cameras around on my back, I came up with a cunning plan. 

Made from bits of M.D.F. I had around, plus an old garden fork handle and two new pneumatic wheelbarrow wheels for rough ground, I present the Davis patent large format photo trolley. I gave it a good testing last week and it worked well. The box contains everything I need and is padded inside. The wheels worked well, even over rough stony ground and the various soggy bits of the woodland. Still quite hard work but does mean I can spend longer on location than before. Of course, being Welsh I couldn't resist putting a 'tongue in cheek' label on it. 

Maybe the only down side is that whereas before I would carry the camera screwed to the tripod on my shoulder, now, to save the weight on me, I have to take the camera out of the box and screw it on the tripod for every 

Different location I visit. A bit slower maybe, but working with a 10" x 8" was never a rushed affair anyway. Actually, it gives me a bit more thinking time before setting up. I also don't have to ration my kit down to a minimum but I like to keep it simple anyway. 150mm wide angle lens, 240mm sort of slightly wide standard and the 300mm is all I need. I have longer lenses but don't take them on that sort of trekking location. Limited kit focuses the mind and I can visualise quite well with what I carry. Or pull along now! 

Strata Florida, 2025. Platinum Print

The platinum prints are being made at the moment and this is just one of them. I'll post more as the work progresses and more prints emerge. 

You can see me making platinum prints on my YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@pete-davis-photography

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. 

Page 47