Penmaenmawr, Llanfairfechan and the Carneddau - MIKE ABRAHAMS
Festival Exhibition
Location: TBC
Open: 1st October - 31st October 2025.
© Mike Abrahams
“In 1941 my mother escaped the bombing in Liverpool to stay with Maia and John Davies in Penmaenmawr who gave her safety and love. They became like parents to her and like grandparents to me. I spent the happiest days of my childhood with them and Maia’s sister Lyn Jones during the 1950s and 1960s.”
“The mountains of Llanfaifechan and Penmaenmawr contain a rare and tough granite which has been worked since pre-historic times. The mountains had been quarried for stone axe-heads in neolithic times and on an industrial scale in the 19th and 20th centuries in order to pave the streets of Liverpool and Manchester with hand-cut setts. The setts used for cobble stones started to be replaced by more efficient road surfaces and the uniquely hard stone chipping then provided the ballast for the railways, and aggregate for concrete. More than a thousand men worked in the quarry and ships still came to the Darbishire Jetty until 1976 to be loaded with stone for Liverpool and Hamburg. The building of the A55 in the late 1980s ended the shipping and built over the promenade. Today less than 20 men work in the quarry as heavy machinery replaced the one thousand men.”
© Mike Abrahams
“Today I look at the now-stopped quarry clock and the place where the jetty extended into the sea. I look up and miss the raw mountain ravaged by industry and now re-wilded. I look at the A55 and where the long and wide promenade once stood. The beach huts and playground that once were, and Sambrook’s cafe that served us with ice cream and entertained us with its shooting gallery and juke box. I imagine the well-to-do who came in the second half of the 19th century inspired by prime minister Gladstone, who chose Penmaenmawr as his retreat.
I walk in the Carneddau mountains delighted by the wild beauty of the landscape, the sheep and the wild ponies and remember the farmers who rounded up their sheep on horseback with their dogs.”
© Mike Abrahams
“In 2024 I returned to Pen with the intention of documenting life in the village and surrounding area with my camera as a tribute to Nan, Uncle John and Aunty Lyn
I am reimagining my memory.”
We are thrilled to be sharing a selection of Mike’s ongoing new work at this year’s Northern Eye Festival.
Mike Abrahams started his career as a freelance photographer in 1975. He has worked regularly on assignment for both the leading British, European, and American newspapers and magazines. These include The Times, The Observer Magazine, The Independent Magazine, Sunday Times Magazine, The Telegraph newspaper and Magazine. L”Express, Le Monde and Liberation in France, Der Spiegel and Stern in Germany, Fortune and Forbes in the US.
In 1981 he was co-founder of Network Photographers a group of young photojournalists who pooled their resources with the aim of documenting the world around them and providing mutual support in their endeavour to produce compelling social documentary work.
Mike Abrahams has produced major bodies of work in Britain, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Africa, India and Cyprus. He covered the collapse of Communism in Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia.
His work “Faith” covered Christian devotion through 14 countries and was he awarded a World Press Photo Award, Daily Life for that body of work
In 2024 his book “This Was Then” was published by Bluecoat Press
All festival exhibitions are FREE to visit.