PHILIP JONES GRIFFITHS
Boy Breaking a Piano in a South Wales Village, 1961
You can hear this photograph. Moments after this was taken, there would have been an exquisite, discordant roar from the remains of the piano. Possibly inspired by Jerry Lee Lewis' antics three years earlier, the hero of this photo is punk before punk was even a thing.
This photo is joyful. It shows wanton destruction with the glee so often displayed by young boys of a certain age. The trio of figures display surprising dramatic range: the lad with the boulder, lips curled in determination and gait extended to gather all his might; the boy in the middle, hands tense and awkward in anticipation of what is about to unfold; and at the back, a lone figure who is undeniably involved but has removed himself, possibly to claim plausible deniability should it all go wrong. When Jones Griffiths asked the boy what he was doing, he replied "My mother gave me this to mend". The masts on the left place the action in living memory. Without them, the picture would float in time.
Looking to the edges of the action, there is a clash between the urban destruction in the foreground and the Welsh landscape layering up to the horizon. This photo was taken in the village of Pant-Y-Waun, which had won awards for its outstanding beauty, but by the mid-sixties it was gone, consumed by the open cast mining operation of Taylor Woodrow.
Wales is hindered by nostalgia. This photo takes two tenets of Welsh culture, rugby and music, and uses them to destroy each other. The boy said he was practicing his line outs. It's hywl destroying hiraeth. It's not too much of a stretch to notice that the piano is a baby grand rather than an old upright, a hint at struggles between social orders that were to come. In this photo, the future meets the past with an almighty crash. The youthful impulse to destroy was met by the photographer's impulse to create and record.
Image: Philip Jones Griffiths, Boy Breaking a Piano in a South Wales Village, 1961 © Philip Jones Griffiths / Magnum Photos
Philip Jones Griffiths is best known for his Vietnam War documentation in *Vietnam Inc.* (1971). His Welsh work from the early 1960s predates his decade in Asia and shows the documentary eye that would define his career.
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