Nick Wynne

Nick Wynne made these square-format colour photographs while studying at Gwent College of Higher Education in Newport during the early 1990s. He returned to Britain around 1991 from his travels and joined its established Documentary Photography course, where Daniel Meadows was a tutor.

Founded by Magnum photographer David Hurn in 1973, the Newport course placed considerable emphasis on working beyond the college and engaging directly with people and their surroundings. Its students had spent much of the previous decade photographing the town through the annual Newport Survey, producing a series of publications devoted to family life, industry, education and other aspects of Newport.

Wynne’s photographs were made after the principal period of the Newport Survey and form an independent body of work. The selection combines portraits with photographs made around the town, documenting the people he encountered and Newport at the beginning of the 1990s.

Although still a student, Wynne arrived at Newport with several substantial projects already behind him. He had photographed extensively across Liverpool and Merseyside, spent several months with Traveller communities near Shotton steelworks and made work in Romania and the United States. The Newport photographs form the next chapter in this early archive.

Working in colour and square format, Wynne made direct portraits alongside wider observations of Newport and its surrounding areas. This gallery brings the surviving selection together through British Culture Archive for the first time.