I’ve always been interested in photographing strangers, getting to grips with the unknown. I find the more things change the more they stay the same . When faced with the question ‘WHERE IS WALES’ MOST HISTORIC LOCATION?’ most would respond with Cardiff, but not two centuries ago this was not the case. If asked this question at the beginning of the nineteenth-century the response would be Merthyr Tydfil. Merthyr’s rich history has been all but forgotten. It was the first town in Wales – the first real town, at least. Earlier, there had been places that had been called towns, but most of these amounted to very little: a huddle of houses in the shadow of a castle and not much more. Many places that prided themselves on their urban dignity were considered laughably petty.
Cardiff outgrew Merthyr in the second half of the nineteenth-century and it acquired a commercial glamour with its Coal Exchange and its opulent Edwardian civic centre. Cardiff ’s success as a political capital and a twenty-first-century media hub are of recent vintage. With this in mind, I travelled to both places and interviewed its residents to discover their opinions on their respective homes. The Book 1819 displays 59 images of Merthyr Tydfil and Cardiff taken over five months, capturing the areas and the individuals. This magazine is a small insight into the boook 1819.