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The national collection of Welsh photographs

The National Library of Wales houses over 950,000 photographs connected to Wales. These range from works by pioneering photographers from the earliest days of photography to portfolios by contemporary practitioners of the art.

The collection comprises mostly images connected to Wales. This includes views of Wales, the work of Welsh photographers and photographs of Welsh personalities.

Two years after the invention of photography the Rev Calvert Richard Jones took the earliest recorded photograph in Wales. Taken on 9th March 1841, it is a daguerrotype of Margam Castle, the house of his wealthy friend Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot.

Reverend Calvert Richard Jones was one of a circle of early photographers in Swansea. This circle was centred around the enlightened industrialist John Dillwyn Llewelyn of Penlle’r-gaer.

William Henry Fox Talbot had invented another, ultimately more successful photographic process. Using paper negatives, Talbot’s process allowed the production of multiple copies of an image.
 

Talbot was a cousin to Emma, wife of John Dillwyn Llewelyn. Through this connection John Dillwyn Llewelyn and his family became early pioneers of photography during the 1840s and 1850s – see Early Swansea Photography

Geoff Charles

The largest individual collection in the Library is that of Geoff Charles, a photojournalist with North Wales Newspapers for 50 years. Geoff Charles worked throughout north and mid Wales from the late 1930s onwards. Much of the valuable Geoff Charles collection has now been digitised and can be seen on our website.

Much of the material in the National Collection of Welsh Photographs has been donated to the Library. In recent years we have received important collections from the Cambrian News, Harlech Television, Hyder, S4C, and the Wales Tourist Board.

In addition the Library continues to buy relevant works by contemporary photographers.

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