Social Media can often give off negative connotations, but it has also on occasion provided me with some fantastic opportunities, this was the case when I had the chance to attend an event that wouldn’t have initially been on my radar.

Back in July 2023, I stumbled across an interesting post on instagram by The Workers Gallery in Ynyshir (go and check them out) about a forthcoming exhibition featuring legendary photographer David Hurn. After a couple of Direct messages to Gallery manager and resident artist Gayle Rogers, my excitement built in anticipation of attending this exhibition opening from one of the most diverse and talented working photographers from recent times.

I’m generally fine rocking up to events and exhibitions on my own, but on arrival to this one, I soon realised that there were some extremely respected photographers in attendance, which made the the evening feel even more special to me, considering the relatively small amount of people invited to attend, and the fact I was one of them.

From the small selection of photo’s I took during my visit to the David Hurn - South Wales Valleys: COLOUR exhibition, that are featured throughout this piece, you can see that the gallery was well represented on the day with close friends, I’m also guessing family members as well as many well respected members of the photographic and art fraternity attending the show. I was lucky enough to get some time to speak to David in person which was an absolute delight, and he was happy to offer some insight and inspiration, which was of course very well received by myself. Apart from being extremely well known for documenting everything from the Hungarian revolution, the Aberfan disaster, and the Beatles and swinging London during the 60’s. He also set up the world renowned School of Documentary Photography in Newport during the 1970’s and has of course continued to photograph Wales and its people throughout his long illustrious career. I also got to speak to some other great Welsh photographers including another predominantly self-taught documentary photographer, Dan Wood, I later spoke to the editor of Offline magazine and co-founder of Ffoton Wales; Brian Carroll, as well as photojournalist Glenn Edwards, who recently produced the brilliant exhibition and book entitled “Yucker’s Year” covering the amazing career of Newport’s very own heavy weight boxer - David Pearce, amongst others. I’ll put some links to some of their inspiring work below. The event also happened to coincide with celebrating David’s 89th birthday which was a great to be a part of, as they had arranged a beautiful and unique cake in the shape of a roll of Kodak film, which you can see in my photos, this had a lovely personal touch with the 89 exposures detail.

Seeing the exhibition and the array of familiar as well as some unfamiliar images to me in print was fantastic, as with any gallery exhibition seeing art or photography displayed larger than you would normally see the in a book, print or on screen is always a great experience.

From a documentary photography standpoint I decided to take along my Canon R6 camera and limited my lens choice to the light and low light friendly RF f1.8 50mm STM prime lens to allow for some tighter reach and crops over my initial thoughts go using the Fujifilm X100V. This allowed me to capture some nice quick portraits of David as well as some general photo’s of the evening around the gallery.

To summarise my experience after revisiting these photographs and writing this blog, it still feels like a pinch me moment to get to experience a gallery opening from such a talented and highly respected photographer who is still working hard at the age of 89, what an inspiration! To capture and document an event celebrating an artist renowned for documentary photography - does it get any better than this.

A big thank you goes out to Gayle at Workers Gallery for the invitation and all of the people I got to speak to on the night. Please take some time to check out and support the Workers Gallery and keep an eye out on their future exhibitions and collaborations.

Workers Gallery

David Hurn

Glenn Edwards

Dan Wood Photo

Offline Journal

Thanks for taking the time to read this latest blog, and if you have enjoy it feel free to leave a like or comment, which are always much appreciated. In the meantime look out for my next blog post which will be dropping soon.