March 1982

In the last blog post, I mentioned that one of the kids at the home would go on to make remarkable photographs. What follows is Steve Phillip’s account of that time and the difference it made to his life, and some of his photographs. I will only add one thing: Steve writes below of my ‘sacrificing a year’ to be with kids in Wales, but I thought then—and still do—that, whatever it was I gave them, I got as much or more back from the kids and the staff in the children’s home and school where I worked.

There is a saying that everyone has a hidden talent, but how many people find out what that talent is in their lifetime? Fate sometimes takes a hand, as it did for me. Brought up by my great grandmother in poverty in South Wales in the 1970s my life was probably mapped out. Job in the coal mines if I was lucky, and a life without aspiration, hope or satisfaction. Add being taken into care and living in a children’s home at the age of 12 and you could be forgiven for thinking things were about to get worse.

But they didn’t. Life in the children’s home was a lot, lot better than it had been. People took an interest in me. I was given brand new school uniform and a pair of rugby boots and three meals a day. Then one day a guy appeared in the children’s home. A total alien to us kids…he looked intelligent, he was softly spoken, quietly confident and didn’t take offence when we tried to wind him up. Julian had arrived from Oxford after finishing his degree to volunteer in the children’s home I was living in at Aberdare. 

He set up a darkroom in the laundry room with black bags hanging over the windows to keep the light out. One evening I sauntered in to the laundry to see what was going on and as I was shown a blank piece of paper turn magically into a photograph. I was hooked. I wanted to learn how to do that….how to take pictures.

Julian had a Contax….maybe only second at the time to the Rolls Royce of cameras, a Leica. It was hugely exotic and I envied him greatly. I saved enough for the cheapest SLR there was, a Zenith ET…£30, totally manual without a TTL meter even. Julian taught me all the settings and I soon discovered with practice I had a bit of a natural eye. Quickly grasping that unless I got the settings right I would be wasting film and therefore pocket money. 

I spent many hours walking around the valley with Julian learning about photography, what made a good composition…using light and the correct shutter speeds and apertures to get the effect I wanted. I also learned about life, about opportunity, that there was a big wide world beyond the Cynon Valley and that if I worked hard I could experience it. I learned that I didn’t have to accept what life may have had planned for me. 

After moving secondary schools five times I found myself on the vast Gurnos Estate at Pen Y Dre High School in Merthyr Tydfil. Two teachers who were keen on photography, Steve Knapik and Walter Waygood, took me under their wings. They gave me the key to the darkroom and I was involved in a documentary photography project called ‘Our Town’ with Walter, culminating in a National exhibition. 

Steve entered one of my photographs in a BBC children’s photography competition hosted by Pebble Mill at One. I found myself on TV, and the local newspaper The Merthyr Express did a story. They asked me if I would like to go on work experience, I bit their hand off. During my week of work experience one of the two staff photographers resigned as he had got a job on a daily newspaper back home in his native Lancashire. The editor asked me if I would like to apply for his job as a junior press photographer and a 30 year career in newspapers was about to start.

If it had not been for Julian sacrificing a year of his life to come to Wales and help the children in the children’s home, would I ever have discovered my hidden talent? Would I have photographed royalty, Rugby Grand Slams at the Millennium Stadium, football cup finals at Wembley, Nelson Mandela? Would I have travelled to India to photograph children who had a much worse lot than myself, living and begging in the streets of Calcutta, soldiers in the jungle of Belize? 

More importantly would I have been able to break that cycle of poverty, misery and very possibly see my own children end up in care? 

Probably not. Sometimes all it takes is an act of kindness from a gentle soul to make a difference.

Newspapers sadly decided photographers were no longer needed around 2015 and I was made redundant from one of the best jobs in the world. Now I am a freelance photographer but more importantly chair and sit on fostering panels trying to help recruit quality foster parents that can give the children in their care the opportunities I got. A lot of Julian rubbed off on me.