Conwy Camera Club has unveiled a display of 80 portraits of local people, one born in each year since the club was founded in 1945. The images are on show at Conwy Culture Centre until early September. See our video from the launch event below.
The club was formed, as the North Wales Camera Club, in January 1945 after garage manager Alec Orr placed a notice in the personal ads column of a local newspaper in 1944. This year, the club’s 90 members are taking part in activities to celebrate the 80th anniversary.
From January to April, nine of them photographed members of the community to create the sequence of portraits that is now on show.
The sequence includes Janette Hughes during her term as Mayor of Conwy, which ended in May. At the opening of the exhibition, she said: “Coming here and seeing these pictures today, I’m in awe really.
“This display brings together all aspects, ages, backgrounds of the community that we live in. It’s testament to the professionalism and the hard work in your club, but also it’s a testament to the community in which we live.
“I for one am extremely grateful that I was mayor at the time this was taking place, because it meant I got to be in this display and I got to take part in this celebration.”
Janette is a teacher, and many of the faces were familiar to her. “There are so many people here who I’ve grown up with, worked alongside or I’ve even taught,” she said. “It has a real personal feel for me. Some of these children here are the children of people I’ve taught as well.”
Club chair Bob Gresty paid tribute to Alec Orr for taking the first step towards the club’s foundation during the Second World War. Bob also thanked the photographers who took part in the ‘80 Years, 80 Faces’ project. “I think it’s quite powerful to see it displayed like that,” he said.
The monochrome portraits are presented in two rows along one wall in the Culture Centre. All subjects were photographed against a plain backdrop, to provide coherence across the sequence and to avoid any background distractions.
Burgess and former Mayor of Conwy Vicky Macdonald, whose portrait is in the display, said: “I think the display is really, really lovely, and it just reflects so much about Conwy. The young all look so amazingly assured.”
