A Fine Beginning is a Welsh photography collective, established by James O Jenkins, with the ambition to develop a platform to discover and showcase contemporary photography being made in Wales today. The collective takes its name from the first chapter of Dylan Thomas’s unfinished novel ‘Adventures in the Skin Trade’.

The collective launched with a publication in May 2013 at the publishing weekend of the inaugural Diffusion: Cardiff International Festival of Photography. The issue showcased the work of four of our current members; Gawain Barnard, Jack Latham, Abbie Trayler-Smith and James O Jenkins. In foregrounding photography in Wales, the festival provided an opportune moment to launch the first instalment of A Fine Beginning.

A Fine Beginning aims to offer a platform to photographers making work in Wales to have their photography seen and appreciated in Wales and beyond. To find out about future projects or to submit your work, please get in touch (@afinebeginning).

Our first exhibition ‘A Fine Beginning: Made in Wales’ was at Arcade Cardiff (14 – 30 March 2014). The exhibition showed work from the collective as well as selected images from work we have featured on our blog. The second ‘Made in Wales’ exhibition opened at Oriel Colwyn on 5 September (to 31 October 2014) and shows work by 21 photographers we have featured on our blog.

On 28 August, our joint exhibition with the Scottish collective Document Scotland called ‘Common Ground’ opened at Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow. The exhibition features new work from the collective and runs till 19 October.

The Collective

Rutherglen – James O Jenkins

James O Jenkins
(b. Gorseinon) is a photographer and co-founder of Portrait Salon. He has exhibited at The Photographers Gallery, The Association of Photographers and Hotshoe Gallery. His work has been published widely including The Sunday Times Magazine, The Independent on Sunday and Creative Review. In 2012 he published his first book ‘United Kingdom’, a visual study of traditional annual UK customs, which has been shown in London, Helsinki, Arles and New York. In 2013 his series ‘United Kingdom’ was featured at The Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art.

The Big O – Abbie Trayler Smith

Abbie Trayler-Smith
(b.Newport) is a documentary and portrait photographer whose work draws primarily on an emotional response and engagement with her subject. Having spent 8 years at The Daily Telegraph, covering news and features around the world, including the Iraq war and Asian tsunami, she now travels globally on assignment for a wide variety of clients and enjoys spending time on personal long-term projects in the UK. Abbie’s study ‘Still Human Still Here’ on destitute asylum seekers in the UK was exhibited at foto8’s HOST gallery in London in 2009 along with her award winning accompanying multi-media short film. Her portrait of Chelsea from the series ‘The Big O’ won 4th prize in The National Portrait Gallery’s Taylor Wessing Prize 2010. She joined Panos Pictures in 2007 and became a member of Panos Profile in 2010.

A Line Runs Through Us – Gawain Barnard

Gawain Barnard
(b. Rhondda) completed an MFA in Documentary Photography at the University of Wales, Newport in 2009. His Photographic work and research has mainly focused around the environment and people of his youth. Making quiet portraits of adolescence and precise observations of their surroundings Gawain brings new and fresh reflections of the once industrialised regions of South Wales. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented by Millennium Images.

Looking for Lilacs – Jack Latham

Jack Latham
(b. Cardiff) is a Welsh photographer based in Brighton. A 2012 graduate of the BA Documentary Photography course at the University of Wales, Newport, his work focuses on more conceptual subject matter and is often presented in the form of large format photography and self-published books. His photographs were first published in the British Journal of Photography in their “2012 Student Profile”, which highlighted up and coming talent across the UK. Jack has continued to work both in the UK and internationally and some of his most recent work is currently being exhibited in New York. In addition to his own practice he co-curates a monthly lecture series in Brighton “Miniclick“.

Common Ground runs at Street Level Photoworks until 19 October. For more about Common Ground, take a loot at this feature about Document Scotland.

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Document Scotland was formed by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, Colin McPherson, Stephen McLaren and Sophie Gerrard in 2012. We were brought together by a common vision to witness and photograph the important and diverse stories within Scotland at one of the most important times in our nation’s history and to encourage, promote and support photography in Scotland.

‘Kirriemuir’ from ‘Scotia Nova’ by Stephen McLaren

Ironically, the original idea for Document Scotland was not cooked up in Edinburgh or Glasgow, but in Beijing. Jeremy, Stephen and Colin were working on an assignment there together and over a couple of beers we hatched the plan for the collective. It was relatively straight-forward in terms of organisation: we wanted to keep things simple and carry on working to our own agendas but allow areas where we did coincide and overlap to become the basis for Document Scotland. With Sophie soon on board, we built a website which we filled with our own content and invited contributions in the form of blogs, photo-essays and portfolios from other photographers shooting stories in- or about Scotland.

Once we built a bit of momentum, we began to reach out to some of the key players in Scottish photography and initiated conversations about what could be achieved in the short term and what was strategically important in the long run. We weren’t surprised to find that photography in Scotland is a small world, but it’s a environment which is very supportive and constructive. We think most photographers working at present understand the political and cultural backcloth at present and are very focused on making work.

Within our first year, we had staged a group exhibition which included work by 10 exciting contemporary Scottish photographers. In addition, we produced two newspapers and have subsequently produced an electronic magazine and a downloadable PDF, all featuring our own and/or other peoples’ work.

‘Unsullied and Untarnished’, a series by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert

2014 is an especially busy year: we kicked off with a show at Scotland House at the EU Brussels, then came the Beyond the Border exhibition at Impressions Gallery, Bradford, followed closely by Common Ground, our latest show which opened on 26 August at Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow, which is supported by Creative Scotland. In addition, we have launched an 84-page publication to coincide with Common Ground. This features diverse photo essays from the collective, as well as contributions from Welsh collective A Fine Beginning, Malcolm Dickson (Street Level) and Anne McNeill (Impressions). We also took the opportunity of the publication to announce the great Scottish photographer Harry Benson as our honorary patron.

For more information about Document Scotland, see their website. Common Ground is at Streetlevel Photo Works until 19 October.

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See more arts collectives we’ve featured on the site. Think we should feature your collective? Get in touch.