When doing community based storytelling project such as ‘Tallys an Tir’ you never know what you are going to discover or who you will meet. Early on in our collaboration with Kestle Barton in Manaccan, we were lucky enough to be introduced to John Head; a 4th generation vet whose veterinary practice ‘Head & Head’ is still running in Helston today.
Over the 1990’s John spent time documenting the farming families he visited in his role as a vet, producing an extensive and valuable collection of black and white portrait photographs. Now retired, and with boxes of negatives, we were able to help John scan this collection, preserving them for future generations and allowing John to print and exhibit these with ease. Here is a film which we made with John:
Photographing farming families in the 1990’s- John Head- Cornwall from StoryLines on Vimeo.
In the first section of this film John shares his family history and some of his more personal memories of being a vet. These include learning from his father, the changes he has seen within the veterinary field and farming industry, and his motivation for photographing the farming families he spent time with.
In the second portion of the film, John gets together with a group of farmers whom he photographed in the 1990’s. Together the group reminisce about the characters and farms that feature in John’s photographs; sharing stories about farming in the Manaccan/St.Martin area.
John will be exhibiting a further 32 of his photographs at this years Helston fatstock which will be held on Monday, November 18th.
