Remembering Philip Jones Griffiths

Image of Philip Jones Griffiths Philip Jones Griffith’s death represents a loss to Wales and the world.

In one of his last public engagements in Wales, Dr Jerry Hunter from the School of Welsh interviewed the photojournalist from Rhuddlan about his life and work during an evening organised by Caernarfon’n Galeri in September 2007. In summer 2003, Professor Gerwyn Wiliams presented him for an Honorary Fellowship at Bangor.

Philip Jones Griffiths: 16 July 2003

Philip Jones Griffiths is a native of Rhuddlan. Although he qualified in Liverpool as a pharmacist, whilst working in London he photographed part-time for the Guardian. In 1961 he became a photojournalist with the Observer and then in 1966 a member of the internationally renowned Magnum photographic agency. His first assignment sent him to Vietnam and his disturbing and revealing images of the prolonged war in that small country had a worldwide impact. His collection Vietnam Inc., which appeared in 1971, is considered a classic in photojournalism. In 1980, he moved to New York where he assumed the presidency of Magnum, a post he held for a record five years. Then in 1996 Dark Odyssey was published, a retrospective to coincide with a major international exhibition of his work. His photography has seen light of day on the pages of leading journals, among them Time, Life and Newsweek.

Those are some of the plain facts, but the photographs tell the story. As in the case of any significant works of art, this artist’s creativity leads to further creativity and triggers the imagination: a young boy about to hurl a boulder into a wrecked grand piano against a backdrop of industrial wasteland in Pant-y-waen in the 1960s; a soldier’s face, seen unclearly through a bulletproof shield in 1970s north of Ireland; a portrait of a mother and her two blind daughters in 1980s Vietnam. All of them are powerful images that make no attempt to shy from the truth, pictures brimming with humanity and empathy, the photographs of an uneasy eye and a restless conscience. Indeed, Henri Cartier-Bresson has claimed that no one since the days of Goya had portrayed war like Philip Jones Griffiths.

In describing Philip Jones Griffiths as a world citizen, I do so in a positive and literal sense: during the course of his career, he has visited over a hundred and twenty countries in all corners of the world. It is an immense source of personal pride to present this Welsh-speaking Welshman, one who has made an international contribution, for an Honorary Fellowship in the university of his native north Wales.

Remembering Philip Jones Griffiths

Philip Jones Griffiths: 16 July 2003

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