Exposition de Once Upon a Time in Wales

"For 35 years this extraordinary collection of photographs remained hidden from the world. Taken around 1971/2, by 19 year old photographer Robert Haines, they record life in the Welsh valleys, in the village of Heolgerrig and nearby Merthyr Tydfil. Heolgerrig a very close-knit community with Welsh the first language. It was a mining community where most of the men worked underground and life seemed to revolve around the pub and the chapel. Merthyr Tydfil, once the ‘Iron Capital’ of the world, had a justifiable reputation as ‘tough’ with characters such as hard man, Melvin Webber, who died after being blasted by a shotgun, and ‘Mad’ Malcolm for whom no chemical substance was too strong".

Dewi Lewis