Geoff Charles

Geoff Charles (28 January 1909 – 7 March 2002) was a Welsh photojournalist. His collection of over 120,000 images is being conserved and digitised by the National Library of Wales. The final loss of life was 266.

In March 1936, the Wrexham Star was taken over by the Wrexham Advertiser which worked out well for Charles. He was offered the position of leading the photography department of Woodalls Newspapers. He then left to manage the Montgomeryshire Express where he met a reporter called John Roberts Williams. The two of them later worked together on the Welsh language newspaper Y Cymro., Charles continued to document life through photography and one of his best-known images is used as the cover for Ioan Roberts's book about Charles —that of the poet and farmer Carneddog who had to move from his mountain farm near Beddgelert to live with his son in Hinckley. This image was published in Y Cymro in 1945. Charles took many photographs of Welsh life including the many eisteddfodau (cultural festivals). He also documented the loss of the Capel Celyn community under the river Tryweryn which was lost when it was flooded to create the Llyn Celyn reservoir for Liverpool. He covered the protest in 1956 when demonstrators who supported the threatened community travelled to Liverpool to hear the president of Plaid Cymru address the council.

Preservation of images Charles's collection of 120,000 negatives was donated to the National Library of Wales where they remained safely until the 1990s when it was discovered that the photographic negatives on triacetate film were destroying themselves due to a chemical reaction. Images have been scanned at 1200 dpi for display on the library's website at 75 dpi, "[suiting] the resolution of computer monitors; it also prevents illegal copying".

In August 2011, an exhibition of Geoff Charles's photographs was shown in Y Lle Celf (arts and crafts pavilion) at the Welsh National Eisteddfod in Wrexham.