Although I'm from Gower, and would vigorously oppose anyone calling me a 'Swansea Jack', I have to admit an attachment to the 'ugly, lovely town'. In the ten years since I moved away it's managed to smarten itself up a bit, and returning as a tourist I spent much of last week trying to photograph it. I lost a couple of days to torrential rain (I persevered, got drenched and it took most of the next day to dry out my gadget bag), but I had really good light on Thursday, and made hay :)
When I left Wind Street had lost almost all of its former glory, its Victorian and Edwardian buildings run down and grimy. The local authority redesignated it the city's 'cafe quarter' and encouraged bars and clubs to take over the premises, with the proviso that they respect the buildings' original features. In some cases this has brought them to the fore; I used to work behind the bar in the last building to the right in the picture below, never dreaming that beneath the modern signage was carved 'Metropolitan Bank of England and Wales'.
Particularly impressive is the old Head Post Office, now 'Idols' nightclub, but the carved lions have yet to reappear.
The biggest revelation has been the old 'maritime quarter' which housed many of Swansea's port facilities, and some of its grandest buildings, long left in decline. The picture below shows the mixture of architectural styles, from the Georgian houses of Somerset Place (left), the early Victorian Town Hall (centre) and the Edwardian Port Authority Building (right).
The old Town Hall is now the Dylan Thomas Centre, named for Swansea's favourite son (when Shane Williams is injured), who's responsible for 'ugly, lovely town', as well as the more ambiguous 'Swansea is the graveyard of ambition'. The picture shows a side elevation as I could not get up early enough to catch the sun on the front
I managed to get through a half dozen rolls of film, but in the interests of not boring viewers comatose I'll end here. However, for every picture I took there were at least another five where the light was on the wrong side, or the sightline was obstructed, and I think photographing Swansea'll prove a project that will take up several visits home.
Comments
Smashing photos
'Tis a long time since I've been to Abertawe, glad to see they're cleaning it up. Thanks for the nostalgia.
Angharad
Angharad
Don't leave us in suspense.
Well, me, anyway :) Camera? Film? (FP3?) self developed/printed? and how did you manage to get any sun? In Cumbria it only came into its own on Monday after reasonable but dullish Friday and Saturday and a very wet Sunday.
Wales, for me, is all about the open, wild countryside of mid and north Wales and occasionally the beaches and hills of Pembroke. Cities anywhere rarely interest me except fleetingly and I'm always glad to get out, though your pictures are excellent and almost tempt me.
thanks
Geoff
Surprisingly modern,
perhaps even ironically so, for me. They were shot on a pair of Pentax MX SLRs (circa 1980), and because I was working away from my darkroom, on Ilford XP2 C41 chromogenic that I could drop into a high street minilab. One camera had a Pentax-M 50mm f1.4 and the other a Pentax SMC 28mm f3.5, both with Heliopan Red-Orange (Wratten 22) filters. I took a few other lenses, and the usual compliment of filters but pretty much stuck to the above.
My original plan was to replicate views in old postcards, but thanks to ongoing construction / roadworks I hardly managed more than a handful. This is one of the small few that I realised...
We had one good day although it started drably, and I'd had a through drenching two days before. Usually when I visit home I photograph Gower, but my interest in Swansea's older architecture had been piqued by old postcards and various websites. I only managed to cover a fraction of what I intended... I want to spend at least a day in the city's parks (including Cwmdonkin Park, much loved by Dylan Thomas), and there are the areas that have yet to be smartened up... pretty much everything on the North Eastern parts, and others. It's scandalous that a church this fine should lie derelict barely half a mile from the city centre
and I need to get upstairs access in one pub (the manager was out when I asked) to photograph the front elevation of the Victorian Infirmary which is obstructed at ground level...