Professional photographer Harry Williams has had an intriguing life travelling with his photography, and he's spoken about his favourite shots he's taken in Wales
At Harry Williams’ home in Caerphilly, a leaf balances on a stand while he snaps away at it with a childlike focus. At 76 he hasn’t lost his appetite for the perfect shot and he’s invited me to mull over his favourite Welsh subjects in his long career travelling the country on jobs for magazines, newspapers, broadcasters and the Welsh Government among others.
An only child to his father, a miner, and his mother, a cleaner, he grew up in Pontyberem in Carmarthenshire at Railway Terrace in a home owned by the National Coal Board. He vividly remembers the senses of racing the chugging trains with his friends, among them Doug and David Penfold, and sucking in the steam as the trains went by.
When he was nine years old he took his first ever picture on his father’s Box Brownie which is of the Penfold brothers standing in front of their home on the street which was two doors down from him. “I took pictures of everyone once I got my hands on that Box Brownie,” Harry recalls. “Neighbours, family, friends, everyone. I realised back then how much I really enjoyed taking pictures of people.
"People are most enjoyable to photograph because they’re interesting. They don’t have to be famous to have a great story. When people see my photos it’s the people they want to talk about. ‘Who is that?’ ‘What did they do?’ People are interested in people and there is something beautifully intriguing about taking photos of them.
“I know a lot of photographers who don’t like shooting people because they don’t like the need to break the ice, but I love that side of it. I feel very privileged to have met so many interesting people and I’ve loved dropping the camera and having a chat with them. Everyone has subconscious barriers and there is no magic trick to bringing those barriers down, it’s just about being human.
"By talking to them you learn their experience and that often dictates the image. You need to know their experience to get an inkling of what their character is like and to know: ‘What do I want to get from this shot?’ I try to make it as informal as possible - there’s no big preamble. I like to feel as though I’ve drifted in and out of their lives and captured a moment of them which tells a story.”
As a boy he'd travel to Carmarthen Bay in the summer months with his parents to pick co*ckles at the weekends. Half the families in Pontyberem would be there, he remembers. Even then he realised something worth capturing was happening in front of him.
“Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t thinking about compositions, but I knew it was something I really wanted to take a photograph of,” he recalls of his trips to the estuary. “As time went on my parents helped me set up a dark room. We didn’t have the money to do it properly so I learned how to process the films and how to print them myself. I used to wash the prints in the bath.
“Even at college, where I did graphic design, I didn’t have the money to buy the proper materials so I used to go into Llanelli and around the shops to get any old boards I could get my hands on. I’d take them home, steam them with the kettle and paint them with emulsion and I’d work on those. They couldn’t believe it when I took the boards to my interview at Newport College of Art, which was very prestigious at the time. But I did something right because they gave me a place.”
Harry went on to have a long career working with the Wales Tourist Board through the 70s and 80s before working as a freelance photographer. “I’ve had a wonderful career and enjoyed it thoroughly," he says. "I've been very fortunate to spend a lot of time photographing the coastlines of Wales, the mountains and hills of Wales, as well as many Welsh craftspeople. It's been a varied career. One minute I'd be down a slate mine lugging my lights with me and the next I'd be in a castle. I've loved it, even though it's been hard going at times. In fact what I’ve enjoyed the most is getting up at 4am and racing like hell to get into position to nail a shot that I’d been envisaging in my head the night before. You can never beat that feeling.”
