Breathing in the dawn and capturing the beauty in the everyday

A digital exhibition of photographs depicting a diverse range of people across Wales at dawn has been launched to coincide with the Senedd’s sixth term. Cardiff-based artist Zillah Bowes, who took the pictures, spoke to political editor-at-large Martin Sh

DAWN has long been a powerful metaphor for a new beginning, so Zillah Bowes’ video artwork of pictures to mark the new term of the Senedd has a powerful resonance. She was commissioned by the Senedd to take a series of pictures of people doing a variety of activities at sunrise.

It involved a lot of early starts, but she’d already got used to taking pictures at an unusual hour in the Elan and Claerwen valleys in Powys for a moonlight project called Green Dark that was recently on show at Cardiff’s Ffotogallery.

Explaining her fascination with the dawn, Bowes said: “Quite often I’d be out when it was a clear night and because of that I’d see the sun rise.

“My work would be interrupted or ended by the sunrise. I started to become interested in the light change – I’m generally interested in light and how it affects space and mood.

“I noticed how first there would be a little bit of light in the sky. And then everything would change and there would be this big shift.

“There’s a certainty about it – it happens every day.

“I think for this commission I felt that if I could somehow capture that moment, that feeling, then I’d be able to represent the dawn.”

She said there are a lot of people about early in the morning all over

Wales: “I learnt a lot about the morning. The first thing I wanted to do was capture a range of activities. It’s very interesting that when you start to research you realise there are a lot of different things going on then. Often we don’t notice because it’s an individual having a relationship with that time of day on their own.

“You’ve got people who are at work, people going to work, people coming back from work. I think we understand that – we can think about night shifts and early mornings and what type of people might be doing that in town, rural and suburban areas.

“But you also have – and I found this fascinating – quite a lot of people who are very dedicated to an activity of their own. In my piece I have early morning swimmers, a surfer, and a dog walker.

“If you go out in certain built-up areas in Wales at dawn – assuming it’s not at the height of summer when it’s super early – there are a lot of dog walkers!”

There are 23 pictures featuring 15 people from different walks of life in various parts of Wales and eight landscapes.

There are plans, not yet finalised, for the video work to be shown outside and inside across Wales during the coming five years. After that, it will form part of the permanent collection of the Senedd.

Those pictured include a hill farmer, a fisherman, a performance artist who works as a care home worker, a firefighter, a refuse collector, a lab manager who’s been testing for Covid, two wild swimmers, a three-year-old girl going on an early morning walk with her parents in the woods, an older man walking in a park, a surfer, a retired teacher, a public sector leader and mother, a yoga and dance teacher and a dog walker who lives in the hills.

The digital artwork can be seen in various ways – on a loop in a gallery, but also on screens outside. It will also be available online.

Bowes said: “In this project I tried whenever possible to give a voice to the people in my photographs – a

visual voice, if you like. I was trying to humble myself to allow their being to come through – and when it does, it’s a very intimate moment, being present for those people’s mornings, and it’s often quick because people are busy at that time of day.

“Being there with those people in those moments – whether it’s with a firefighter at the end of his shift when he hasn’t had any sleep and been called out, or whether it’s somebody who’s got up early to take care of their kids or to get some work done before they take their kids to school, it’s a very private moment and it’s such a privilege.

“There’s a beauty in being present for that. There’s a lot of ritual early in the morning, so it has a kind of sacred feel.”

Bowes said she had met most of the people before she photographed them: “It’s very important sometimes to create a relationship of trust, so we get to know each other a little.

Some of them are people I knew from before, but there are a few – and they’re ones that are therefore magical in the piece – where I was present at a location, maybe photographing other things or people I knew and I got to know them when I was there.

“Sunlight is very important because it’s only with it that we see the sun rise. We know innately there’s this future happening – this change, renewal, re-set. I was trying to capture everyone in one moment around Wales, while they were doing things.

“It’s a joyous project, really. There’s beauty in the everyday. Doing that for me every morning in the pandemic was lifting. I quite like getting up early and every time I had to get up early to go and meet someone, especially because it was at the start of the sunrise, I had a sense of renewal.

“I feel very honoured to have been allowed into these people’s lives and to be trusted, especially as I didn’t know all of them beforehand. I hope some of their spirit, and the beauty of their ritual in the morning, even if it’s just coming home from work, will be accessible to members of the public.

“We’re coming out of a pandemic and I guess it’s a breath-in for a reset, and I hope it offers that to viewers. It’s short, so hopefully people will watch it and have the feeling that the participants have – this idea of breathing in dawn.”