26 March 2024

Below is a photograph

PLEASE DON’T LOOK

Cover it up

Now – uncover it and look for about 2 seconds
Then – cover it up again

What kind of date would you put on the picture ?
Where was the picture taken ?
How many men are in the picture ?
And how many horses ?

How did you get on with a 2 second look ?
It seems 2 seconds is about how long we look at any one photograph on Instagram!
Have we stopped looking ?

For me it’s not long enough to begin to read the photograph, it’s not long enough to understand the story, it’s not long enough to appreciate its appeal or lack of it. Perhaps we owe the photographer more time to take in the work.

At least we should give it a go, give it a longer look.

A longer look at a photograph is, of course, not a new idea. John Berger was a master of it, take a look at his book ‘Understanding a Photograph’. More recently Francis Hodgson writes online about specific photographs in ‘Hodgson’s Choice’ www.francishodgson.com . ‘On Chapel Sands’ by Laura Cummings tells her mothers story by carefully scrutinising her family photographs.

All these examples take a longer look at photographs.

So . . . let’s look again at the photograph above. Let’s give it more time, let’s look for the signs and the elements, let’s look for the story.

If we end up with more questions than answers perhaps that means we are looking at a good photograph.

A primitive hut, a low hanging ceiling, straw on the ground, a chair without its back, a window in need of a clean. A rural setting, on a hill ?. It appears cold and wet outside.The industrial clothes seem to contradict what we see outside. In this way it appears a world unknown, a rather strange world.The image seems almost Dickensian. Certainly it seems that we must be in Eastern Europe, many decades ago.

Seven men. Resting? Exhausted? Slumped around the stove, hot perhaps, maybe not. Thermos flasks suggest tea brought in rather than made on the stove.A break from work ? Look closer, for clues .A fluorescent light, ‘Puma’ on a pair of trousers, a wardrobe suitcase ! A horse, tied up as if in western. A working horse, collared and blinkered. Looking for its own refreshments ? The place seems a mess, old tins stuck in a corner, a a beaten up cupboard waiting to be closed, chewed up earth outside.

Yes, we’re getting there.

Hardhats with the suggestion of a lamp, a miners lamp ?
But wait, no blackened faces, perhaps it’s the start of the day rather than a break. Wellingtons suggest that it’s wet at work. We imagine it’s hard work, exhausting work. We imagine it’s a work without great expectations from the body language that we can see.

It’s an unprepossessing photograph, no obvious point of attention, a haphazard composition and a fight with the light. It seems that there’s almost no photographer in the place, apparently completely ignored. The activity in the shed, or should we say lack of activity, is more important to the men than the photographer. Only the horse seems to notice.

Yet in many ways it’s a great photograph because so much great photography is about effort and access , about being in the right place at the right time. It took effort and timing to capture this moment. A moment that tells the story for us all.

Let’s suppose, despite appearances, that the date is not the 1930s but in the 1950s or to stretch a point the 1960s. Wrong. The caption says Pentwyn 1993… can you believe it ?

This is no ordinary mine in Wales in 1993. In that year only three British Coal collieries still existed. This has to be a private mine. A mine outside of the work practices of British Coal. Unregulated and without a union.These small mines had no deep shaft, rather they ‘drifted’ into the hillside. Underground, the miners worked in claustrophobic seams, bent over in streams of water, hacking at the coal face with picks and shovels. Wooden props attempted to keep them safe. Horses hauled the ‘drams’, full of coal, to the surface. The miners were paid by the amount of coal they produced. rather than the hours worked. Safety was not always a priority. In the early 1990s the rate of fatal accidents in mines such as this was 23 times that of British Coal collieries.

Yes, every picture does tell a story. In this case it’s a grim story. A bunch of men, made redundant by the closure of British Coal collieries, are forced to work in primitive conditions, in order to use their skill and expertise of coal getting to earn a living.

The photographer has let us into a hidden world, a world generally unseen. A Dickensian world in 1993.

Let us thank the photographer

Thank you . . . . David Hurn

You can find more David Hurns images in this series at

https://pro.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&STID=2S5RYDYT2U6A