newport, 22–24 october
the first frames belong to football. a red corridor, a dragon, the word croeso, a pitch through a fence. that is one part of my wales notebook. outside it, newport begins to assemble itself: the usk, the bridge cables, the red curve of a sculpture against blue sky. there are painted walls and old stone, shopfronts and stretches of water with the buildings turned upside down in them.
i photograph a city in pieces. a whole place is too large a claim for a few days and a camera. a bridge, though. a doorway. the shape somebody has put into a public square. those will fit inside a frame. i can put them beside each other without pretending they add up to the last word on newport.
on 24 october, the photographs move to cardiff city stadium. seats, grass, the lines around a pitch. football keeps its place in the notebook. the rest of the trip is beginning to fill the pages around it.
the coast, then cardiff, 26–27 october
some places begin at the edge of the water. penarth does in these photographs. lamps, railings and the pier going out into grey. the pavilion has its white face turned towards the shore. further along in the sequence, a view through an opening makes a frame inside the frame. there is plenty of sea left beyond it.
by late morning, barry has changed the colour of the page. bright machines, dark water. inside the arcade, the lights seem determined to use every colour available. outside are open paving, painted walls and the shore. i keep both versions. they belong beside one another.
that afternoon, cardiff gets a roof. the market's ironwork and glass hold the picture above the stalls. the arcades make their own long lines through the city. the following morning, the bay opens everything out again: red brick, cranes, steel and water. the pierhead supplies a great block of colour. i have photographs looking up, looking across and looking through. each angle leaves another cardiff just outside the frame.
a table is a place, too
the food has its own pages. on the evening of 26 october, those pages say asador 44: wood, tiles, menus, a glass-fronted cabinet and plates photographed close enough to leave most of the room out. the little details around a meal make their way into the record as well. a table edge. the space between plates. the way a dining room looks before it becomes a photograph of food.
the next day's lunch photographs are at spitfire barbecue. metal trays, bottles lined up, a pint on the table. i have more than one view of the same meal. that seems fair. a plate can hold a photograph; the things around it can hold another.
later in the trip, tir a môr has its lights on in llanrwst. the name is there above the window in the evening photographs. fish and chips, three small pots and a paper bag make the next page. the pub photographs have their own small vocabulary: a glass, a table, a mirror, lettering on the wall. there is a whole meal in the margins. i want to leave enough room in this notebook for those margins, without turning every table into a verdict.
the road north, 28 october
on 28 october, the road takes up a fair share of the notebook. the clock in rhayader gives it a town centre for a moment. then come the reservoirs, the dam walls and the hills around the elan valley. at llyn clywedog, water and trees take over another run of frames.
near dinas mawddwy, the photographs belong to the route: a road into a valley, a pull-in, hills occupying most of the space. i cannot make those three pictures into a whole village. they are enough as they are. the next bend changes the photograph.
there is a red telephone box in the betws-y-coed area, then llanrwst in the afternoon: stone buildings, a narrow run of water beside the street, trees with their autumn colour still attached. the river keeps its own line through llanrwst. the bridge sits in the photographs without needing to account for everything on either bank. i let the town keep some of itself.
stone, shore and the last few frames, 29 october
the next morning begins in the photographs beside the river at llanrwst, before the sequence reaches the mountains. the sky changes from frame to frame. dark water, rough slopes, a little light on the ground. there are photographs that use colour loudly and others that let black and white carry the shape. both are in this notebook.
then conwy: castle walls, leaves, the estuary. the castle gets the skyline. the water gets the rest. by llandudno, the buildings have stretched themselves along the coast. pale façades, balconies, a monument, a long strip of shore.
the last food photographs are much less architectural. pastry in a paper bag, photographed in the car. i have not made it grander than that. a trip can finish on a small thing. i leave wales 26 with those small things still in the sequence: a clock, a glass, a painted wall, a bridge. enough to begin telling it. enough space left for the next page.