Raw power
A stunning new collection of portraits chronicling Newlyn’s fishing industry is launched this Friday. Rachel Walker talks with its creators, David and Jan Penprase.
“We only had five minutes for each sitting,” explains David Penprase, the man behind Salt of the Earth, a stunning portrait photography book capturing the people of Newlyn: the men who go to sea, the women and children who support them, and the rich tapestry of workers who pack, transport and sell the catch, keeping the wheels of the local fishing industry turning.
“We watched people come through the door and had to weigh them up straight away – whether to be polite, or if they’d embrace a bit of swearing,” he laughs. “David’s got the gift of the gab,” chips in David’s wife Jan, who often works alongside her husband on his portrait work. “Honestly, he could talk the hind leg off a donkey. So while David starts chatting, I watch how the subject interacts and moves. When I see a pose that works, I tell them to stop, and David starts photographing.”
David, 73, is clearly quite a character himself. A fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (FRPS), he didn’t get into photography until he was 40. Before that, he was the lead vocalist in 1960s band Dave Lee and the Staggerlees (he was Dave Lee), then a nightclub and clothes shop owner. With retirement looming, he needed a project to channel his boundless energy, so he started photographing “local characters” in their home town of Porthleven, Britain’s most southerly port.
David and Jan originally planned to shoot 100 portraits, but soon the headcount reached 340 – all photographed on traditional film and developed in the shed at the bottom of their garden. The first print run of the resulting book, called Harbour to Harbour, sold out in a few weeks, and another run soon followed. In total the book has raised some £57,000 for two local charities, Children’s Hospice SW and Cornwall Hospice Care.
After the success of Harbour to Harbour, David was approached by the Fisherman’s Mission to produce a similar book to document the fishing community of Newlyn. They were hesitant at first. “It can take a lot out of you,” says David. “The days are long – developing the film is a time-consuming process – and we’d agreed that the last book would be our last.”
“But then we realised it was our dream project!” laughs Jan. “So we soon said yes.” Local brothers Shaun and Anthony Stevenson heard about the project and donated their fishing lofts as a studio – the perfect backdrop – and David and Jen set to work.
Most fishermen are photographed at sea or around a port – always outside, explains David. “So it was interesting doing the portraits in a loft environment. The fishermen were out of their comfort zone.” The photographs are very raw, very honest. No boats or nets to hide behind, or movement to distract them. Instead, the emphasis is on the camaraderie of a crew, the bond of a father and son, the beaming smile of a crab fisherman holding his catch. It’s a reminder of the faces who put fish on the table – a reminder that it’s not the trawlers, but the trawler men who hoik the catches from the sea.
It’s fitting then that the beneficiaries of this project is the Fishermen’s Mission, which provides emergency support alongside practical, financial, spiritual and emotional care for fishermen and their families.
“Every penny from this book goes to the Fishermen’s Mission,” says Jan. On parting she reminds me to extend the book launch invitation to all Fish on Friday readers, really bringing home that this is a community project in the widest sense: not only does it chronicle and raise money for a community, it invites the wider world to become a part of it too.
Copies of Salt of the Earth, £20, will be available from the Fishermen’s Mission in Newlyn; call 01736 363499 or email: newlyncentrecm@fishermensmission.org.uk. For more information on the making of Salt Of The Earth, visit: www.themissionproject.co.uk.
