Lens Festival : Festival Line-up Announced

Wed, 10 Sep 08 12:51:00

 

The fourth annual Lens Festival, celebrating Welsh documentary photography, takes place at The National Library of Wales on 1 November 2008. The festival highlights the vast photographic collections held at the Library and also celebrates the work of four contemporary photographers currently working in Wales.

 

Lens 2008 will consist of lectures by four contemporary documentary photographers, each giving an illustrated talk on a project related to this year’s theme, 'A Sense of Place'.

 

 

The line-up for Lens 2008 include:

 

Paul Cabuts, who will look at the different perspectives of three photographers working in South Wales during the 1950’s: W Eugene Smith, Robert Frank and Geoff Charles.

 

Haydn Denman, a freelance photographer and BAFTA winning cameraman who has travelled the world, taking photographs of the exotic places and the people he meets along the way.

 

Robert Haines will discuss his critically acclaimed work Once upon a time in Wales, a collection of evocative photographs taken around 1971-2 in Heolgerrig, Merthyr.

 

Jeremy Moore - a freelance landscape photographer will discuss his latest project Between earth and heaven, focusing on both the industrial and wild landscape of Blaenau Ffestiniog.

 

 

Organisers of LENS see the festival as the perfect opportunity for professional and amateur photographers, archivists and collectors, historians and journalists to discuss photography in Wales and to learn more about the wealth of Welsh documentary photography held at The National Library of Wales.

 

This year’s festival will also include a tribute through film and photograph to one of Wales' most famous photographers, Philip Jones Griffiths.

 

According to Lens spokesperson Medi Jones-Jackson, “Philip had been extremely supportive of the Lens festival and was one of our keynote speakers and patrons. His passing is a great loss to the field of documentary photography and we hope to pay a fitting tribute by showing footage of Philip at work from the moving image collection of The National Library of Wales”.

 

The National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth is the home of the nation’s largest documentary photographic collection; which contains over 800,000 images ranging from the earliest photograph taken in Wales in 1841 to the works of current photographers.

 

Lens will take place on 1 November and tickets cost £20.

More information about Lens, and tickets for the event, are available from www.llgc.org.uk/lens08

 

Box Office: 01970 632 548

 

 

For further information

 

Medi Jones-Jackson on 01970 632 534 or llinosmedi.jones@llgc.org.uk