In 1988, while studying photography at Wallasey, 17-year-old Nick Wynne travelled with a 5×4 camera to land near Shotton steelworks in Deeside, North Wales. The college assignment was to photograph landscape. When he returned to the site, Irish Traveller families and New Age travellers had established neighbouring camps there.

Wynne’s presence was initially met with suspicion. Some of the children threw stones while he set up his camera, and adults came out to question why he was photographing them. He explained that he had already been working on the site before they arrived, telling them: “You’re in my landscape. You’re in the way.”

Over the following days, the suspicion eased and Wynne was allowed to return. The camps remained at Shotton for approximately five or six months, during which he visited two or three times each week. He initially cycled to the site and later drove after passing his test.

Wynne believes his age helped. He was closer in age to some of the children than to their parents and did not appear threatening. As his presence became familiar, he was able to spend extended periods at the camp and photograph its everyday life.

A boy named Ben became a central figure in the work. He accompanied Wynne around the site and grew entirely comfortable with the camera. “Ben was the one who clung on,” Wynne recalls. “We walked around the site together all day, and he let me photograph him all the time.”

The photographs developed through repeated contact rather than a brief visit. Their significance lies in the familiarity Wynne established and in the attention he gave to a community living temporarily beside one of North Wales’s major industrial sites.

The Shotton work also marked a decisive stage in Wynne’s development. Naturally shy, he had previously avoided photographing people, concentrating instead on fields, sheep and landscape. At Shotton, the camera became a means of making contact. The resulting photographs document a young photographer learning to approach people, earn their trust and remain present.