Priceless photo collection depicting Swansea half a century ago on display in museum
Swansea Museum now holds a priceless collection of images of the city from almost 50 years ago.
The striking photos depict the region in the 1960s and 1970s, right before it was incorporated as a city.
The artist behind the collection, George Little, passed away in 2017, aged 89.
For the benefit of the public, his widow, Carolyn, has gifted the images to the Swansea council-run museum.
She said: “I’m delighted that George’s photographs will stay in the city he loved and documented.
“He was best known as a painter but he was also a very accomplished photographer.
“It’s good that Swansea Museum values the collection highly and is eager to use it for the good of local people now and in future.”
George Little, a painter from Swansea, documented South Wales's heavy industry.
As a student, he attended Swansea School of Art and then as an academic. He also held teaching positions at Swansea University, where he was a founding member of the Taliesin arts complex.
“George Little’s photo archive is a beautiful collection of important imagery,” said council cabinet minister Elliot King.
He continued: “It’ll be valuable to local people now and in future generations as they seek to understand Swansea of the 60s and 70s.
“There’s so much to treasure in the collection and we’re very grateful indeed to Carolyn for allowing the collection to become part of the council’s permanent collection.”
Following his death, Mrs little invited Swansea Museum exhibitions officer Karl Morgan to view the archive.
He said: “The collection, which George had carefully built up and curated, blew my mind – the hundreds of negatives in the archive show that he was a fantastic photographer in addition to his skill as a painter.
“Swansea became a city in 1969 and the images show the area immediately before and after that momentous change in status.
“Last year we put on a really popular exhibition that featured some of the images. We’ll continue to make them accessible to our visitors in the best ways we can.
“Already we sell postcards featuring some of the pictures – they’re very popular indeed.”
On October 26, the museum hosted a launch for a new biography about George Little’s life- George Little: The Ugly Lovely Landscape by art historian Peter Wakelin, originally from Swansea.
Peter Wakelin said: “Some of George’s photographs appear in my book as do many of his paintings.
“Born in the east end of Swansea in 1927 he grew up next to the abandoned copper works, slag heaps and still-busy docks of Dylan Thomas’s ‘ugly, lovely town’.
“As a teenager the destruction of the Swansea Blitz was seared into his imagination.
“He brought a deep visual knowledge to a life’s work exploring the dramatic forms of industrial and urban decay in photographs, drawings and paintings.”
Mrs Little also offered a gift to the museum, which was announced at the same time.
It consisted of a large oil painting ‘The Cockle Women of Penclawdd’, completed in 1953.
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