On Thursday 7th July we held a special one-off event to mark the closing of the RPS Documentary Photographer of the Year 2021 exhibition in Oriel Colwyn. We invited participants from the EDGELANDS project to present their work, and talk about the challenges they faced, how they overcame them, and what they got out of the project.
Doors opened at 7pm for a 7.30pm start - The event was FREE to attend.
There is this urge to photograph the sublime, yet we find ourselves surrounded by the ordinary and overlooked. What stops us from photographing the mundane? Our perception of aesthetics and beauty, to which the ordinary often does not conform? Or the sheer lack of interest in the subject matter which we deem not worth photographing?
©Daniel Muckle Jones
Edgelands or peri-urban areas are land in-between, forming transition zones but also boundaries. These fringelands fulfil vital functions to our society, but their appearance might not appeal to a traditional perception of beauty, and so they are rarely photographed.
In this project work seventeen photographers explore edgelands in North Wales and share their experience of, and personal take on, these frontier lands.
They aimed at reaching four goals:
- to photograph the overlooked on the fringes of urbanised areas,
- to photograph in the vicinity where we live and work, thereby keeping the carbon footprint for this photo project as low as possible,
- to make this project a unique and personal account of what we see, and how we visualise our response to the edgeland, and
- to guide and encourage photographers with different photographic backgrounds and skill levels to step out of their comfort zone, engage with each other and build a community, nurture a growth mindset and expand our personal boundaries.
©John Staten
This work resulted in a self-published photobook, the online edition can be seen here:
https://issuu.com/royalphotographicsociety/docs/frontiers_north_wales
We are pleased to host this event in a follow up to the published book, to allow an insight to the photographers and their work.
©Robert Cain
Frontiers/Edgelands is a collaboration between the Royal Photographic Society and the North Wales Photographic Association.