Three Generations of Welsh Miners (1950) – Eugene Smith – National Museum Wales, Cardiff

23Aug10

Eugene Smith - Three Generations of Welsh Miners (1950)

Two different views of the Valleys, separated by 60 years are represented by new acquisitions on display at the National Museum in Cardiff.

Eugene Smith’s iconic “Three Miners” photo is displayed alongside the colour photographs of the modern Valleys by Anthony Stokes and it’s an interesting contrast.

Standing in the physical presence of a widely reproduced, well known image is a mixed experience. Perhaps it’s just that we’ve become so used to seeing colour profiled digital perfection in gallery prints but Smith’s image somehow looks cleaner and sharper in reproduction. The print just didn’t have the warmth you’d expect from a silver gelatin “proper photograph”, then again it’s an image that was designed for publication. Newsprint has limitations, the excessive contrast would have given the image enough punch to stand up to the various processes as it went from negative to printed page.

From today’s perspective the image feels oddly staged. We’ve grown used to the more candid journalistic stance of ’60s and ’70s photographers but this picture – taken during the 1950 election campaign – feels like a film still from some Hollywood movie about the Valleys.

The three miners have obviously been directed: They look away, out of frame into the middle distance as if they‘ve just heard a train whistle, slightly concerned and tired like they‘d just come off a shift.

They’re placed low in the frame allowing a glimpse behind at a clutch of terraced streets, just enough to place it generically in the Valleys but not quite enough to root it in a specific village or town. It relies on our knowledge of archetypes, much of it learned from films.

The houses, the hillside, the miners’ clothes and faces all feel caked in grime. The picture feels as if it’s been drawn using a lump of coal and has the tonal range of a charcoal sketch. It’s all carefully designed to lead us to one conclusion, the heroism of the honest, working man.

In complete contrast Anthony Stokes’ pictures are invariably devoid of people and almost take care to avoid leading us to any emotional settlement. His subject is the architecture and landscape of the area. Whereas Smith’s image had helped to set our mental image of the Valleys as monotone and grey, Stokes reveals a bright, almost gaudy, world of clashing and complimentary colours.

Stokes is great at colour coincidences: The gold of a sunlit hillside balances the gold of painted bricks around a house doorway. The bright red of a car matches the washing on the line behind it.

Both Smith’s and Stokes’ images are a product of their time. Whether either present a true image of the region is neither here or there, they both use the Valleys as raw material, and that’s the tricky, unavoidable and exploitative nature of the medium without the filter of the human touch that painting or drawing adds.

Strip the colour way from Stokes’ pictures and you’d still know they were modern as the dispassionate, slightly deadpan approach couldn’t have existed when Smith was working. Then again, to self-consciously pose three workers in such a setting today would feel awkward, stilted and ironic.

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Tags: Anthony Stokes, Cardiff, Eugene Smith, National Museum, Photography, review, three miners, Wales, Western Mail