After the night feed. Rhydian, Michelle and Rachael – Garden village, Gilfach Goch – December 1985 © Francesca Odell/Ffotogallery.
On show for the first time in 30 years, Francesca Odell’s warm, intimate images finally get their due
“My pictures reflect my interest in people and the very different ways we have of coping with and enjoying life,” wrote Francesca Odell. “I try to convey the essential humanity we share as individuals, despite sometimes very adverse situations, believing that through knowledge and understanding, we can come to a more tolerant attitude towards each other and, perhaps ultimately, change for the better.”
Opening on 04 October at Ffotogallery as part of Ffoto Cymru, Francesca Odell: Coping With and Enjoying Life is a posthumous show, and the first on Odell’s work in 30 years. Curated by Sam McGuire and Chloe Davies, it focuses on Odell’s commissions for the Valleys Project, which McGuire discovered while researching for her PhD on the project in the gallery’s archive. “What’s so great about Odell’s work is the way I believe she approached her practice,” says McGuire.
“I don’t see her images as representations of the socio-economic context of that period. The works are embedded in that political moment, and they offer some form of commentary… but I see her works as photographs of people.”
Fran, to those who knew her, was born in 1951 and passed away in 2022; she discovered her talent for photography late and almost incidentally, and took up her place on the famous Diploma in Documentary Photography at Newport College of Art in 1984, after becoming a single parent. Odell completed the course and went on to win prestigious commissions, before ending up leaving professional photography to become an archivist at the National Portrait Gallery.
“I try to convey the essential humanity we share as individuals, despite sometimes very adverse situations.” Francesca Odell
‘Doc Phot’ was set up by Magnum’s David Hurn, who designed the course around getting people into work in the photographic industry, and former students remember it as being both diverse and elite. Photographers such as Martin Parr and Josef Koudelka would drop by, and the small group of students ranged from Oxbridge graduates to those from ‘back to work’ programmes. Chosen for their ideas over their images, the lucky few would embark on an intensive two-year course that required them to shoot and print work daily. Leaving her three daughters with their father, Odell moved alone to Newport and threw herself into it.
“She had an intense interest in people and their lives and their livelihoods,” says Lorelei Mariner, one of Odell’s children. “She would be incredibly empathetic, and just showed a real interest in what people did – whether it was on a grander scale or on the most simplistic level. She was able to bring people into her sphere and to engage with them at a really intimate level.”
Lorelei and her sisters, Eleanor Thompson and Naomi Fulford, were all under ten when this new creative calling consumed their mother; too young to understand it then, they are now thrilled her work is being recognised. Daniel Meadows, who taught on the Doc Phot course, remembers Odell as a talented, committed course-member, and a lovely person who he stayed in touch with. “There were very few postgraduate courses in the practice of photography [at that time], and absolutely none in documentary photography [except Newport]. It attracted an enormous range of different kinds of people to it.”
“She was always very intense, once you got into looking at the work. She was always very keen to make better pictures, but she would always interrogate your solutions to how she should go about stuff, she would challenge you…in a very polite way. So a good student, because that’s the kind of student you want.”
Meadows recalls Odell’s projects on local female bodybuilders and a community at the local Turkish baths, which he hadn’t realised existed. Odell sought out stories that interested her, mostly around women, and got to know her subjects, creating a bond of trust that is palpable in the warmth and intimacy of her images. Her most famous work is the series of commissions she was awarded as part of the Valleys project organised through Ffotogallery, which had a remit to capture “social, industrial and topographic change” in the South Wales valleys at that time.
There was a close connection between the gallery, the Doc Phot course and the project, mostly due to their proximity, but the commission was wide-ranging and included photographers such as David Bailey and Ron McCormick; starting in 1984, it yielded an archive of some 450 images, shot by ten image-makers. Odell’s commissions were predominantly of Sandy Lane, an alternative community in the Gower where she lived with her daughters before moving to Newport. She went back after Newport, and again after her retiring from the NPG.
Odell’s photographs show the building of Sandy Lane and the people who had chosen a radical lifestyle at a time of great societal change. Her work stands out for its tenderness, and its positive focus in what was a challenging time for many. Her lived experience and connection with the area where she lived are evident, and struck McGuire when she found the work. “There is an image called After the Night Feed that I was just completely enamoured with,” she recalls.
“I’m a parent and the image captures such a recognisable feeling. There’s something incredibly emotive about it, and the idea that a photographer had access to that moment was fascinating to me. I just set about a kind of exploration, ‘Who was she? How did she get this access? How did she earn the trust of these subjects?’ And then to find out that there is nothing written about her…”
The lack of information about Odell, the fact that nothing of her existed online except a staff photo from the NPG, led McGuire to focus on Odell in her PhD, research which precipitated the Ffotogallery show. “The sadness – but also the joy – of the exhibition is that it is able to give this snapshot of two-and-a-half years of a photographer’s life,” she muses. “All of the projects [on show] are made in that period, and actually, it’s probably a shorter period even than that. The images are all made from 1984 to 1986, and even the ‘86 ones are very early ‘86.”
Paul Reas – who also shot on the Valleys project, and was a technician on the Doc Phot course while Odell was studying – echoes these words. He remembers Odell’s talent, and how nice she was, and how, as a single parent working in a fast-changing industry, she had to choose stability over an unpredictable freelance photography career. He wishes she could have lived to see the exhibition, describing it as “a bittersweet moment”.
Francesca Odell: Coping With and Enjoying Life is a snapshot of what might in other circumstances have been a great career; it also testifies to a life well-lived. Odell is remembered with great affection by her family and friends, and the warmth and human connection in her images live on.
Francesca Odell: Coping With and Enjoying Life – Photographs from South Wales 1983-1985 at Ffotograllery runs from 4 October to 8 November 2026. Ffoto Cymru runs at venues across Wales 02 October to 31 October, 2026 under theme There’s More to Life www.ffotogallery.org
