Photographer capturing a disappearing industrial landscape

Is Wales’ once-proud industrial historical past being left to quietly disappear into the arms of nature and decay?

For artist Jon Pountney, who has spent the previous decade documenting the stays of Welsh industrial historical past, the query is a pertinent one.

He made his house in Wales after arriving in Cardiff to check images at college within the Nineteen Nineties and, though a long-time resident, mentioned: “I’m at all times eager to say that I’m wanting from a non-native viewpoint.

“History has at all times me and up to date historical past – within the grand scheme of issues, these ruins are pretty current.”

The thought for the give attention to trade first surfaced closed to his then-home in Cardiff, on the Splott foreshore space, as he was engaged on a undertaking which was later proven at Oriel Colwyn in north Wales.

He mentioned: “It’s a really fascinating house. It’s not a sandy seashore. It’s made up of brick rubble which is from the steelworks in East Moors, which was throughout the best way from the place the seashore is, and so-called slum clearance within the southern streets of Splott within the late Seventies.

“So the seashore is made up of this industrial detritus actually which has simply been pushed out into the water and left. From a distance it’s sort of picturesque however if you come down to have a look at it in shut examination, it’s all brick and rubble.”

He has captured photographs from throughout south Wales specifically and mid Wales as he began exploring past Cardiff, starting with the valleys, close to the place he now lives in Treforest, Rhondda Cynon Taf.

“I’d see these superb sights which might be in all places within the valleys. They’re hidden in plain sight as a result of there’s so many.

“What’s struck me all through doing this undertaking is so many of those areas aren’t protected or cherished or used,” he mentioned.

“An enormous a part of this undertaking is a warning to the longer term that these post-industrial areas of the previous are our industrial areas of the current now. If you have a look at someplace like Port Talbot – what is going to Port Talbot steelworks appear like in 100 years?

“I used to be desirous about the poem Ozymandias the place there’s a statue searching on a wasteland. Once upon a time it was a godlike Pharoah determine searching on a civilisation however now it’s only a desert.

“There’s fairly a couple of statues up the valleys of coal and iron magnates and so they’re now searching on nothing or an industrial property. What was their works or coal mine is gone and it’s been changed by only a load of sheds in some locations.”

A lot of Welsh industrialists have been at one time a few of the richest individuals on the planet, though little stays of their area now, and he wonders if the same destiny awaits right now’s monetary giants.

“To consider the best way these areas have been managed, approach these areas have been managed and the riches they created, did that ever feed again into Wales as a society and once more that’s a narrative for right now.

“People working in Port Talbot are on good wages, however all the cash that website will need to have made up to now or may nonetheless make perhaps with authorities possession, it’s the place do the earnings go, and that’s the subtext to the undertaking actually.

“Aesthetically it’s about these areas however the subtext is what can we study for the longer term.”

One place which has stayed with Jon is Cwmystwyth in Ceredigion, close to Aberystwyth.

He explains: “It’s a valley which is an historic gold, lead and copper mine the place I feel one of many oldest artifical golden objects in Wales was discovered not that way back.

“Wow, what a panorama. If it was wherever else on the planet it could have a customer centre and boards telling you this view was this, however clearly in Wales we solely do castles.

“The panorama itself, the place all of the mineral ore has washed out of the hillsides, greens, oranges, simply unimaginable colors, and I managed to get there simply at a time when the sunshine was altering fairly shortly with wind and cloud and it simply appeared actually superb.

“It made me assume I’ve obtained to proceed this undertaking.”

“I feel nature is doing an immense quantity to only obliterate quite a lot of this historical past and I feel it’s unimaginable the velocity with which a few of the stuff occurs.

He described a gathering with a former miner who talked of the “hellscape” of spoil ideas and a devastated panorama within the time of the pits, who had questioned who would wish to dwell in such a spot.

But now “60 years on or no matter, he mentioned ‘it’s me. I’m right here now. There’s birds of prey, it’s quiet, you’ll be able to hear working water’.

“That actually fascinated me as a result of I can’t think about how terrible that panorama did look.

“They [the industrial remains] nearly appear like follies or have nearly been made picturesque by nature and that clearly is a part of the concept of the undertaking. It is unusual to see how shortly timber and shrubs and stuff can obliterate stone walling.”

Jon is now planning to increase the undertaking additional into north Wales after receiving a fee to work within the Blaenau Ffestiniog space with younger individuals, reflecting on the panorama.

He will even work on documenting Port Talbot steelworks for an instructional undertaking how the top of labor in an space impacts native individuals.

“Port Talbot is the final bastion of this sort of dying breed sadly, and past that, what’s left?” he asks.

“Not very a lot sadly.”