Newport Museum and Art Gallery. September 2019.

They were hanging the exhibition the day before it opened. So I took the opportunity to meet and Photograph Ron McCormick before the crowds made it impossible, and he kindly gave me the time in his  busy schedule.

Ron McCormick  was born in Liverpool, and first studied art at The Liverpool College of Art and The Royal Academy Schools, London, before switching  to photography. After a long career in photography he came to the University of Wales College Newport as Senior Lecturer in Documentary Photography with the founder of the first degree course David Hurn, in 1966. I wish now that I had waited a year, because I started a general course in Photography at the Berkshire College of Art in Reading in 1965.

Bernard Mitchell 2020

www.ffoton.wales

A Centenary Symposium to celebrate the birthday of Emyr Humphreys, was organised by Prof Kirsti Bohata, at Swansea University, on the 13^th April 2019.

One of the greatest Welsh Writers. Emyr Humphreys was born in Prestatyn on the 15^th of April 1919, this symposium was organised to honour his literary and cultural legacy. Here are some of the great and the good who were present.

Sadly Emyr Humphreys died on 30th of september 2020 aged 101. Novelist, Poet and Dramatist. He is photographed here at his home in Llanfair PG, circa 1998.

Introduced by Christine Kinsey, Bernard Mitchell gave a talk about his new book Pieces of  a Jigsaw, published by Parthian Books at the Osi Gallery, Llansteffan on Friday 8^th June 2018.  The exhibition will be available throughout the festival and includes images of Osi Rhys Osmond, R.S.Thomas, John Petts, Kusha Petts, Raymond Garlick, Mererid Hopwood, Christine Kinsey, Peter Jones and Sylvia Griffiths-Jones.

Beth Allender

Images by Beth Allender

A visit to a Rhymney Valley terrace, a small nook of a Welsh mining village, we meet Tracey Moberly, multidisciplinary artist. Given Ms Moberly’s latest intended artistic excursion into “power”, with Heaven 17’s Martin Ware and artist Sarah Hopkins, and her passion of heritage, we make our way to the obvious place for a photoshoot – the former colliery at Penallta.

The colliery near Hengoed is formerly South Wales’ deepest coalfield; its Grade 2 buildings grand and surprisingly ornate, despite their state of dereliction. The headgear of the two shafts are proposed to be part of a pioneering housing development scheme. The site is breath-taking. You can almost inhale the past.

Tracey is warm and humble; ballsy and mischievous. These are traits that certainly come through in her work. She is in tune with the past, whilst embracing the future. She is an activist, a lecturer and artist. She has been selected as artist is residence for an upcoming expedition to the Arctic Pole.

Steve Allender

Maurice Sheppard photographed in his studio and home in Haverfordwest. Maurice was the first Welsh president of The Royal Watercolour Society.