Gap-toothed kids, creepy dolls and the first smile captured on camera – Ffoto Cymru review

Gap-toothed kids, creepy dolls and the first smile captured on camera – Ffoto Cymru review

Various venues, Wales
From x-rayed paintings to familial horror, the biennial photography festival showcases a stunning range of women who have pushed the medium forward

Grinning broadly with gappy teeth, their grubby clothes consonant with the crumbling edifices around them, a gaggle of seven effervescent children pose for the camera. You wonder what instruction the photographer, Marian Delyth, gave them, to make them laugh so much, and why one of them ended up doing a Superman pose.

The premise of the “poor children in a derelict urban context” photograph is a hackneyed one. Delyth is not glib about it, but her view is both loose and lively, silly and serious, offering an image of urbanisation and poverty that is hard to read. This quality persists in 50 years of pictures – some of which are on show at Delyth’s modestly sized retrospective at Ffotogallery, Cardiff, the major attraction of Ffoto Cymru, Wales’s biennial international photography festival.

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