Derrick Price reviews Shimon Attie's book of Aberfan
In 2006 reporters and TV crews from all over the world made their way to the little village of Aberfan. They were there, of course, to remind us all of the tragedy that had taken place forty years earlier. To tell, once again, the story of how a coal tip had slipped down the mountainside, engulfed some houses and a school, and left 128 children and 28 adults dead. They illustrated their reports with film and photographs from the extensive archive of news and documentary material taken in 1966.
In fact, Aberfan had never been completely out of the news in all the years since the catastrophe occurred. All kinds of people wanted to visit a place that had become synonymous with tragedy, from social scientists and reporters to casual visitors and disaster tourists. It was, after all, a place where a series of appalling events had taken place. These were not acts of God, but the result of human neglect and incompetence. The people of the village were not only bereaved, but treated with humiliating contempt by the State and the National Coal Board, and as passive victims of suffering by the media. They were seen as icons of anguish rather than as ordinary human beings.
Also invited to Aberfan on the fortieth anniversary was the distinguished American artist, Shimon Attie, a man who had never heard of the place and had no connections with Wales. His work, though, has always been concerned with the way in which particular places are suffused with special kinds of memory which shapes their identity and that of their inhabitants. In Aberfan he was to find an ordinary ex- mining village, typical of many others in the Valleys that had been overwhelmed not just by the loss of its children, but by the constant pressure of the memory of that event. Where the news crews were anxious to remind us of the perverse specialness of the place, Attie began to explore and celebrate its ordinariness: to construct a picture of the community which took account of, but was not dominated by, its past.
The result was a remarkable multi-screen video installation which -when I saw it at the National Museum of Wales - impressed me with its conceptual sophistication and technical skill. This, however, would have been unimportant had it not also moved me and given me a greater insight into what it is like to be part of the community of Aberfan – or, indeed of any community. Working over some five months, Attie invited the villagers to be filmed in a makeshift studio. They represented themselves as archetypal figures who embody particular jobs, social roles or positions: there was the Miner, of course, but also the Choir Men, the Single Teenage Mother, the Young Biker, The Boxer et al. A typology, then, of all the kinds of people who make up a particular place. This description makes the piece seem like a nineteenth century photographic project in which people are recruited merely to illustrate the range of trades to be found on the streets of a great city. But Attie filmed his respondents against a dark background and slowly rotated them through 360 degrees so that, although they are appropriately dressed and carry some suitable props, they emerge not as representatives of a type, but as fully rounded human beings. This installation will be shown in many places around the world in the years to come and I would recommend anyone who can to see it.
What then of the book? How far can it offer an “anatomy of a Welsh village”? I think it succeeds very well. It is a usual trope of Valleys photography that people be pictured in a landscape with a view of narrow streets or rain soaked hills as the backdrop. Here, though, the subjects of the photographs are shown against a black background. Lacking the immediate context of place, they are invited to be themselves, or rather to personify their community identity, to act out their own social being. This generates, simultaneously, a particular kind of anonymity and a special sort of intimacy. This is the heart of the project. It is designed to allow the people of Aberfan to escape the nightmare of the weight of the past, to be just themselves, to be ordinary and to remind us what a rich mix of exceptional people it takes to make a commonplace community.
The book is handsomely produced and is accompanied by a DVD providing images from the video installation and an interesting BBC documentary An American in Aberfan which documents Attie’s work and the responses to it by the people of the village. There are moving accounts of the events of 1966, the guilt of survivors, the problems of going on, and the difficulty of leaving this special place. What emerges most clearly is the desire of the people of Aberfan to live their lives outside the glare of publicity – to be left alone to face the challenges of the future just as in any other place.
Derrick Price
The Attraction of Onlookers, Aberfan: an anatomy of a Welsh Village, Parthian, 2008
£39.99
In fact, Aberfan had never been completely out of the news in all the years since the catastrophe occurred. All kinds of people wanted to visit a place that had become synonymous with tragedy, from social scientists and reporters to casual visitors and disaster tourists. It was, after all, a place where a series of appalling events had taken place. These were not acts of God, but the result of human neglect and incompetence. The people of the village were not only bereaved, but treated with humiliating contempt by the State and the National Coal Board, and as passive victims of suffering by the media. They were seen as icons of anguish rather than as ordinary human beings.
Also invited to Aberfan on the fortieth anniversary was the distinguished American artist, Shimon Attie, a man who had never heard of the place and had no connections with Wales. His work, though, has always been concerned with the way in which particular places are suffused with special kinds of memory which shapes their identity and that of their inhabitants. In Aberfan he was to find an ordinary ex- mining village, typical of many others in the Valleys that had been overwhelmed not just by the loss of its children, but by the constant pressure of the memory of that event. Where the news crews were anxious to remind us of the perverse specialness of the place, Attie began to explore and celebrate its ordinariness: to construct a picture of the community which took account of, but was not dominated by, its past.
The result was a remarkable multi-screen video installation which -when I saw it at the National Museum of Wales - impressed me with its conceptual sophistication and technical skill. This, however, would have been unimportant had it not also moved me and given me a greater insight into what it is like to be part of the community of Aberfan – or, indeed of any community. Working over some five months, Attie invited the villagers to be filmed in a makeshift studio. They represented themselves as archetypal figures who embody particular jobs, social roles or positions: there was the Miner, of course, but also the Choir Men, the Single Teenage Mother, the Young Biker, The Boxer et al. A typology, then, of all the kinds of people who make up a particular place. This description makes the piece seem like a nineteenth century photographic project in which people are recruited merely to illustrate the range of trades to be found on the streets of a great city. But Attie filmed his respondents against a dark background and slowly rotated them through 360 degrees so that, although they are appropriately dressed and carry some suitable props, they emerge not as representatives of a type, but as fully rounded human beings. This installation will be shown in many places around the world in the years to come and I would recommend anyone who can to see it.
What then of the book? How far can it offer an “anatomy of a Welsh village”? I think it succeeds very well. It is a usual trope of Valleys photography that people be pictured in a landscape with a view of narrow streets or rain soaked hills as the backdrop. Here, though, the subjects of the photographs are shown against a black background. Lacking the immediate context of place, they are invited to be themselves, or rather to personify their community identity, to act out their own social being. This generates, simultaneously, a particular kind of anonymity and a special sort of intimacy. This is the heart of the project. It is designed to allow the people of Aberfan to escape the nightmare of the weight of the past, to be just themselves, to be ordinary and to remind us what a rich mix of exceptional people it takes to make a commonplace community.
The book is handsomely produced and is accompanied by a DVD providing images from the video installation and an interesting BBC documentary An American in Aberfan which documents Attie’s work and the responses to it by the people of the village. There are moving accounts of the events of 1966, the guilt of survivors, the problems of going on, and the difficulty of leaving this special place. What emerges most clearly is the desire of the people of Aberfan to live their lives outside the glare of publicity – to be left alone to face the challenges of the future just as in any other place.
Derrick Price
The Attraction of Onlookers, Aberfan: an anatomy of a Welsh Village, Parthian, 2008
£39.99