A rich collection of photographic images by eight diverse artists inspired by scenes in the Margam/Port Talbot area reflecting harmony and friction between nature and industry in the community. 44 colour and 26 black-and-white plates.

Casgliad cyfoethog o ddelweddau ffotograffig gan wyth artist amrywiol a ysbrydolwyd gan olygfeydd yn ardal Margam/Porth Talbot yn adlewyrchu cyd-dynnu a gwrthdaro rhwng natur a diwydiant yn y gymuned. 44 plât lliw a 26 plât du-a-gwyn.

Margam Park, as ancestral home of the Talbots of whom Henry Fox Talbot was a pioneering photographer, is a highly suitable subject for a group of contemporary photographers to re-visit and re-portray with their own interpretation.

The book very much lives up to its wonderful title (a haha being a ditch or hidden boundary) focusing on representations of the boundaries and intersections of geography, culture and class which lay (and lie?) within the landscape and community of the Margam/Port Talbot area. Both Karen Ingham and Hugh Adams, in their excellent introductory essays, underline the various contradictions and contrasts inherent in the landscape and the community, be they past or present.

In addition, the writers and the photographers treat their subject with a certain degree of affection and in artistically unusual ways, from Miranda Walker’s shots of blighted landscapes framed with wild flowers to Adam O’Meara’s photographic silhouettes of the steelworks made by exposing sheets of photographic paper to the light pollution of the steelworks at night. Not only are several of O’Meara’s photographs beautiful in themselves (like the title of his section, 'Pollution Rose'), but it is fascinating to think that these kinds of photographs were referred to by Fox Talbot himself as sciagraphs [lit. ‘shadow paintings’].

Although most of the photographers do not address details of the interior or exterior of the house (e.g. the architecture of the orangery, turrets or even looking at perhaps dinner spoons), the two final artists do examine some features of the house: Matthew Pontin uses photographs of pictures of the house as seen through a large format viewfinder and Karen Ingham has some lovely slightly blurred and blotched photographs of the parkland and one view of a window from the inside. I imagine that this blurredness is deliberate on her part so as to reflect the blurred thinking regarding boundaries that existed in the 18th and 19th century desire to capture the idyllic landscape, as in ‘whose landscape is it anyway?’. Hugh Adams goes some way to answering this question in his introduction, although readers should note that the book is heavily weighted against those whom he rather cheerily refers to as ‘the nobs’.

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgement should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio’r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.