Geoff Charles - Photographs.

Geoff Charles (1909–2002) was a Welsh photographer and photojournalist born in Brymbo near Wrexham in 1909. He trained initially as a journalist, studying for a Diploma in Journalism at the University of London and graduating with first class honours in 1928. His early career was in newspapers rather than photography, working for the Western Mail, the Mountain Ash and Aberdare Express and the Surrey Advertiser before returning to north Wales and joining the Wrexham Star in 1934. That year he reported on the Gresford Colliery disaster, challenging the initial official estimate of the number of miners trapped underground and helping the newspaper produce a special edition. Charles began taking photographs while working for the Wrexham Star, purchasing a VPK Thornton Pickard camera using 6 by 9 centimetre glass plates so that he could illustrate his own reports. After the paper was absorbed into the Wrexham Advertiser in 1936, his photographic ability led to responsibility for the photographic department of Woodalls Newspapers. He subsequently moved to Newtown to manage the Montgomeryshire Express, where he worked with journalist John Roberts Williams. From 1937 he also began contributing to the Welsh language newspaper Y Cymro, which would become central to his photographic career. Charles's work for Y Cymro expanded considerably after the Second World War when Roberts Williams became its editor. Influenced by the photographic journalism of publications such as Picture Post, Charles travelled extensively throughout north and mid Wales, combining the responsibilities of reporter and photographer. His assignments covered agriculture, industry, slate quarrying, coal mining, schools, chapels, Eisteddfodau, sport, political campaigns, transport, rural communities and the changing Welsh landscape. Rather than concentrating principally on national events, much of his archive records people at work and at home in small towns, farms and villages. His photographs document mechanisation in agriculture, the arrival of electricity in isolated communities, changes in rural employment and the growing campaign for recognition of the Welsh language. One of his best known photographs shows the farmer and poet Carneddog and his wife Catrin preparing to leave their mountain farm after the death of their son. During the 1950s and 1960s Charles was also motoring correspondent for Y Cymro, photographing new cars and attending events including the 1955 Le Mans race. His wider newspaper work included extensive coverage of Welsh football, local sport and community events. A particularly substantial part of Charles's later work concerns Capel Celyn and the Tryweryn valley, where a rural Welsh community was displaced to create the reservoir supplying water to Liverpool. He photographed the inhabitants, farms, buildings, protests and landscape before the valley was flooded in the 1960s, creating an extensive visual record of the community before its physical disappearance. Charles continued working as a press photographer until his retirement in 1975 and afterwards contributed photographs and articles to Y Cymro and Farmers Weekly as a freelance photographer. His archive of approximately 120,000 negatives was donated to the National Library of Wales, where the negatives have been contact printed and cross referenced with the publications in which the photographs originally appeared. Covering approximately four decades from the late 1930s to the late 1970s, the collection records political and technological change alongside agriculture, industry, sport, language, domestic life and local events. It is the largest individual photographic collection held by the National Library of Wales and provides a sustained photographic record of Welsh life during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Charles died in 2002. Camera is on: Twitter:   / camerasnaps​   YouTube:    / camerasnaps​   Instagram:   / camera_wtfstop_podcast   Merch: http://camera.myspreadshop.co.uk Facebook:   / camera.proje.  . Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0I5BX44... Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ed3... Thank you for all your support. Geoff Charles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_C... Music The First Scenario - Rand Aldo Photographs by Geoff Charles (1909–2002). Geoff Charles Photographic Collection. Source: National Library of Wales. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY SA 4.0). #GeoffCharles #welshhistory #photographer #photography #wales #documentaryphotography #photojournalism #socialdocumentary #photographs #northwales #midwales #welshhistory #historyofphotography