Fay Godwin exhibition in Machynlleth.

jerry12953

jerry12953

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Jeremy Moore
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If anyone is heading for mid-Wales in the next month, it's worth visiting Machynlleth for a Fay Godwin exhibition. Her work is rarely exhibited now but there is a selection from "The Drovers Roads of Wales" at MOMA Machynlleth. Alongside that there is another group of images chosen by selected photographers (eg Paul Hill, John Blakemore, John Davies)and others, together with extended captions. At the Penrallt Gallery/Bookshop a few doors up the road there's another selection of work by the selected photographers which they feel was influenced by Fay Godwin.

It's quite difficult to explain how it all fits together, so rather than go through it all in more detail, I hope you don't mind if I post a link to my blog where I have already tried to explain it all more clearly. But it really is worth a visit, and Machynlleth is a great little town for a visit.

There's a day-long "conference" linked to the exhibitions on March 11th as well.

Links to all venues etc in the blog post.

All shows end April 1st.
 
Darn, that sounds good. Wish I could make it but it's highly unlikely.
 
It's odd, Jerry, that you seemed to show less appreciation for the work of Tom Wood, whose genius is at least as great as Fay's, when his landscape show from Mostyn passed through Aberystwyth.
 
Possibly because i grew up (photographically speaking) with Fay Godwin's work and I understand exactly where she was coming from. My memories of Tom Wood are very hazy but I seem to remember the show was disjointed and a bit of a mish-mash. I didn't feel that the images said much about the landscape, possibly because there was too much personal content? I honestly couldn't understand why it was so highly praised, although I could appreciate the street/documentary work that he showed in his talk.
 
There is no real container for 'landscape' - it doesn't have to be prosaic, or literal.
 
"While many landscape images, then and now, are stunningly beautiful they actually say very little about their subject matter....."

Oh, how I agree, and a point that many landscape photographers here and elsewhere might usefully reflect on. I notice a tendency to 'tick off' a list of popular landscape scenes much as train spotters might have collected numbers. I too grew up with Fay Godwin as my reference point, and it is to her work that I always return when I feel the need to regain my bearings. She didn't just photograph landscapes, she told their stories.
 
This thread reminded me that second hand copies of Fay Godwin's books can be picked up really cheaply these days, yet Tom Wood's early books cost an arm and a couple of legs. A reflection of the fashion of the day, I suppose.
 
Ed Sutton said:
This thread reminded me that second hand copies of Fay Godwin's books can be picked up really cheaply these days, yet Tom Wood's early books cost an arm and a couple of legs. A reflection of the fashion of the day, I suppose.
Click to expand...


Saw one myself for a fiver in a shop in Hay-on-Wye this morning! I suppose they were more mainstream and probably printed in much greater quantities. I hadn't heard of Tom Wood till about a year ago!
 
Jerry, I was personally interested in your mention of Peter Cattrell as Fay Godwin's printer. I know Cattrell's own photography in regard of his work on The Somme battlefield, as he is one of a small handful (I am another) who has been carrying out long term projects there using black and white photography. He of course works in film, and his work has a delicacy, subtelty and 'feel' for the landscape, an absolute sense of genus loci, that I have not been able to get near to in digital. For some reason I hadn't made the connection.

http://www.creativeboom.com/inspira...g-contemporary-photography-by-peter-cattrell/
 
I love stuff like this, following the trails, different people to research you hadn't heard about. Excellent stuff, cheers
 
As if Fay Godwin at Machynlleth wasn't enough to tempt you to mid-Wales, just opened at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, is a major retrospective by of the photographer Pete Davies. This consists mainly of b&w large format landscapes with forays into documentary and colour landscapes. Dating back to the 1970's, it's on until June 17th. . https://www.llgc.org.uk/en/visit/th...ions-recollections-a-lifetime-in-photography/

There's a free talk on Wednesday March 15th. https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/date/315933
 
jerry12953 said:
As if Fay Godwin at Machynlleth wasn't enough to tempt you to mid-Wales, just opened at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, is a major retrospective by of the photographer Pete Davies. This consists mainly of b&w large format landscapes with forays into documentary and colour landscapes. Dating back to the 1970's, it's on until June 17th. . https://www.llgc.org.uk/en/visit/th...ions-recollections-a-lifetime-in-photography/

There's a free talk on Wednesday March 15th. https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/date/315933
Click to expand...

This (http://peteslandscape.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/how-we-view-world.html) Pete Davis?

I really must make some time to cross the Mersey.
 
Although I had been aware of her work for a long time it wasn't until I bought two of her books used last year that I really began to appreciate it so although it's a bit of a trek for me from Hertfordshire
I will try to get to see this, I might even take a camera with me in case it ever stops raining and try to get a few landscapes of my own. the two books by the way are Land & Our Forbidden Land.
 
I've been a fan of hers since the 1980's having bought a number of her books starting with, I think the one on Romney Marsh. I was deeply into atmospheric B&W photography at the time and trying to convince myself to get the wife a second job to pay for the new 6X4.5 which never happened. I've still got a postcard portrait of her (from the Photographers Gallery I think) stuck up amongst others in the hall. Pitty it's a long way from Surrey or I'd be there but I'll content myself with re reading The Drovers Roads of Wales.
 
Just back from the conference - Jam packed with all sorts of interesting information about Fay and her work. There is so much i didn't know about the earlier and later parts of her career! A dvd was previewed and it will soon be available to the general public, and a biography by (I believe) her last assistant is in the first stages of being written.

Apparently all her books are now out of print but as mentioned above i think some secondhand copies are still to be found at good prices.
 
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