Fractured Horizon, A Landscape of Memory/ Gorwel Briwedig, Tirlun Atgof

Photographs by Mathew Manning
Memories and Words by Patti Flynn
Edited by Glenn Jordan

Bilingual Welsh & English. Translated from English by T. James Jones

Paperback £ 6.50

Book Description

This bilingual book (in English and Welsh) brings together the work of Mathew Manning, a photojournalist, and Patti-Flynn, a singer-writer whose family has deep roots in that place now called Cardiff Bay. Together, through pictures and words, they confront the past and present of Cardiff docklands. Though separated by generation and experience, these two individuals – together with the book's editor and translator – have collaborated to create an exemplary photo-text. Over a period of several weeks, they walked together around the shoreline of the area that is currently being reinvented as Cardiff Bay. To find what she remembers, to repossess fragments of her past, the narrator takes the photographer to the edges, the margins, the not-yet-completed spaces of the redevelopment. There, among the time-ravaged and the eroded, the used and the abandoned, she encouraged him to press his shutter before her sites of memory. The work is the product of mutual respect – for her ways of feeling and seeing, for his abilities with the camera and skills in the darkroom. This little book is important – profound, unique, disturbing. Fractured Horizon is introduced and edited by Glenn Jordan. The translation is by T. James Jones, the acclaimed Welsh poet, dramatist and bard.

About the Authors
MATHEW MANNING works as a photojournalist in Somerset. After working in countryside management for several years, he attended the University of Glamorgan (1999-2002), where he took a first class degree in communication studies. This book, and the related exhibition, began as a student project during his final year.

PATTI FLYNN, born in the Cardiff community of 'Tiger Bay', is a professional singer (of Shirley Bassey's generation), who has worked in many countries around the world. After living for some 15 years in southern Spain, she recently returned home to Cardiff where she is currently writing a kaleidoscope of childhood memories of growing up in old Cardiff docklands.

GLENN JORDAN is Director of Butetown History and Arts Centre and Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Glamorgan. Originally from Sacramento, California, he studied at Stanford University (1970-76) and the University of Illinois (1983-86). His publications include Cultural Politics: Class, Gender, Race and the Postmodern World (Blackwell, 1995); Down the Bay: Picture Post, Humanist Photography and Images of 1950s Cardiff (Butetown History and Arts Centre, 2001); and Tramp Steamers, Seamen and Sailortown: Jack Sullivan's Painting of Old Cardiff Docklands (BHAC, 2002). He is currently writing two books: Race (to be published by Arnold) and Voices from Below: People's History and Cultural Democracy (to be published by Arnold).

T. JAMES JONES is a poet and dramatist, who was twice crowned bard at the National Eisteddfod. His publications include six poetry collections, one of which (O Bard Nest) was nominated for Book of the Year 1998; and eight stage plays, including Dan y Wenallt, the acclaimed Welsh translation of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.