small (nation) stories Raymond Williams, documentary and social experience in Wales.

This practice-based thesis uses documentary photography to explore processes of social change within communities in Wales. It focuses on my fieldwork, undertaken with the fraternal organisation Loyal Order of Moose (LOOM), offering insight into a significant but under-researched historical relationship between the United States and Wales, and its continued impact on communities today.<br/><br/>The research questions whether a lack of sustained engagement with community in Welsh documentary, combined with limited institutional support, has contributed to a narrowing of the diversity and depth of storytelling. Can more committed, long-term approaches, attuned to the complexities of Wales’s evolving culture, offer means of constructing more nuanced national narratives?<br/><br/>Central to my analysis are the theories of Welsh writer Raymond Williams (1921-1988), particularly his ideas on culture and national identity. Williams understood culture as a dynamic process shaped by hegemonic power and examined how realist forms sought to represent lived experience. I consider how his ideas on realism might offer tools for rethinking documentary. This forms the central original contribution of my research: while Williams did not make a direct link between realism and documentary, I extend his framework to propose such a connection.<br/><br/>I discuss Williams’s work alongside debates in art and ethnography that grapple with tensions between description and subjectivity. This includes a re-evaluation of photographic projects by Keith Arnatt and Peter Fraser, whose work engages indirectly with Welsh communities while expanding the formal possibilities of documentary. The analysis is further developed through American practices that propose alternative models for representing national identity. Bringing these strands into dialogue, I construct a critical framework that underpins my approach.<br/><br/>The thesis also demonstrates how I have applied Williams’s ideas to my study of LOOM, focusing on the shifting nature of individual and collective experience as the organisation declines in the UK. <br/>

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctoral Thesis

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Student thesis

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Barnes, David

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Durden, Mark
• Lewis, Lisa

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

oai:pure.atira.dk:studenttheses/e1dd932b-a655-493a-9e82-78452483d160

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:pure.atira.dk:studenttheses/e1dd932b-a655-493a-9e82-78452483d160