“just one more stop, then home” is an exhibition of travel slides taken by an unknown photographer during holidays in continental Europe in the 1950s and 60s. Found neatly arranged in a wooden purpose-made box, and marked with dates and locations, they are a reminder of the times when analogue photography was not only a more common experience, but also a selective one, with no more than a dozen shots taken at each location, carefully chosen to capture the atmosphere of a summer vacation and the novelty of foreign travel, something that was only becoming available to a wider part of the British society at the time. There’s something immediately recognisable and, for some, relatable in the way our photographer points the camera at the new sights: an open-air swimming pool, where the water and the air are warm enough not to make you shiver, but to lounge happily in the sun; palm trees and olive groves; different clothes, landscapes and architecture; things we would have wanted to capture ourselves. Looking at the images now, we also travel to the times when tourists wore their Sunday best while travelling; when you could still see fields being ploughed by animals; and when European nature was relatively unspoilt.
There’s a sense of sadness at how this collection ended up at a car-boot sale, a keepsake of happy summers now lost or unwanted. While this question will remain unsolved, we hope it will encourage our viewers to look again at their family archives, or to appreciate the value of anonymous photographs such as these.
The slides come from the collection of Dawson Thomas, who kindly lent them to us for the exhibition.
“just one more stop, then home” is the first in the series of 9 exhibitions that will be organised in 2020 by the*kickplate*project in Brynmawr, Rhymney, Fochriw and Abersychan, thanks to support from the Arts Council of Wales and Cwm a Mynydd, and cooperation with our partner venues.
Welsh info coming soon!
