In the account of his trip to Patagonia in ‘A Wider Sky’ Kyffin creates the impression of being a photographic ignoramus. Equipped with a Polish camera and an incomprehensible light meter he arrived home with 700 photographs. After cataloguing the 600+ slides that have survived the intervening four decades is it time to re-evaluate KW’s view of his photography? To what extent do the photographs in his bequest corroborate his view?
In reality Kyffin was an accomplished amateur photographer who spent much time practising with a camera, presumably his new Polish one, in North Wales in the summer preceding his Argentinian Odyssey.
As might be expected his Patagonian slides, his only surviving body of documentary photography, show a mastery of composition and colour. Even allowing for a few discarded technical failures his is an impressive success rate for someone who implies a serendipitous approach to the technicalities of photography. Aside from some of the hastier ‘grabshots’ and record shots taken on dull days, most make a luxuriant use of colour, something of a contrast to those more familiar with his grey and green Welsh landscapes.
William Troughton