GORDON

Gordon is an octogenarian gentleman who has lived and worked in Burry Port all his life. He was born at number 8, Woodbrook Terrace, a two bedroomed terrace house, which he shared with his parents and grandparents. In 1939, aged five, he moved with his parents, into a three bedroomed council house in 21, Woodbrook Terrace andattended the Copperworks School in Morlan Terrace, an adjacent street.

Gordon impressed me as a very smart and presentable man with a very well tended garden and tidy house. Everyone in the street knew him and enjoyed a regular chat. In 2015 Gordon moved into Plas Y Mor care home, due to his failing health following several days in hospital.

I had been conducting a university photo project at the care home, and went to see him on one of my visits to discuss my project concept, which was to record his life with photography. I was immediately impressed with the neatness and simple nature of his apartment, which may be an influence from his time in the Army.

We live an era that seems to define the current generation by our rapid transition through homes and jobs, this cannot be said of Gordon who had lived in the same house for 76 years. In November 2013, Alex Johnson wrote an article for the Independent, in which he reported that 25% of people have lived in 10 or more homes during their lives and most people have moved home six times before they are 45 years old. He also reported that 67% of those people living in Wales have lived in the same place for more than 15 years. When I met and talked with Gordon I was intrigued to discover that he had only lived an independent life in one house, number 21, Woodbrook Terrace, where he had outlived his parents. I wanted to examine how our two lives compared and to record his life as a single person and to respectfully consider and represent his home-life, work-life and schooling with my photography.

At the age of 69, when I look at my life, I have lived independently in 10 homes, so far and have held employed and self-employed positions too numerous to list here. My career has taken me around the world and I’ve lived in homes across the UK and have now graduated from University. Although Gordon and I have lived totally different lives we still share a common awareness of the times in the 1960s and ‘70s and we were able to laugh at similar boyhood pranks and observations.

Gordon was determined not to follow his father, Gwyn, into the local coalmine and instead joined a tinning factory in Burry Port on leaving school until he was called-up for National Service in 1952 where he saw action in Belize and Jamaica. On his return home following ‘demob’, the tinning factory had closed-down and Gordon went to work at the Carmarthen Bay Power Generation Plant until that too closed at which point he took-on several local jobs until retirement.

This work aspires to capture and communicate an essence of Gordon’s domestic and working life and to be a representation of a senior citizen in Burry Port. The book The Day-to-Day life of Albert Hastings by KayLynn Deveney has greatly influenced my project. This book is a very intimate, yet respectful and well-humoured set of images on the life of an elderly Newport gentleman. KayLynn has managed to capture the personality and character of this man without seeming to be intrusive, a skill I strive to emulate with this project.

RAY HOBBS   December 2018

https://raysphotos.net/