Exhibition: Golden Valley Faces / Hay, until 23 September 2023

[Michael Pritchard]

Richard Jenkins was born in 1890 on a farm ten miles from Hay: and he became a brilliant pioneering photographer. He longed to escape the drudgery of farming – to go away and study. Instead he had to console himself by learning to wield a cumbersome camera,  taking and developing spontaneous and moving portraits of his friends and neighbours going about their everyday lives. He had a gift for capturing his subjects’ personalities, paying tribute to their fortitude and skills.

Miraculously, nearly a thousand of his glass-plate images survived decades of neglect; and since the publication of Golden Valley Faces in 2020, his work has begun to be recognised as a remarkable record of life in rural Herefordshire at the start of the twentieth century.

Café Gallery - Golden Valley Faces
Until 23 September 2023, daily 1000-1700
Hay Castle, Oxford Road, Hay-on-Wye, HR3 5DG
See: https://www.haycastletrust.org/current-exhibitions.aspx