I am 33 years old and I have lived in Wales all my life, well apart from 18 months as a very young child when our family lived in Cyprus where my Dad was posted with the light infantry. I have had the pleasure of travelling to some fantastic locations across the world and seeing some of the greatest natural and manmade wonders but I have to be honest and say that I have neglected to visit this wonderful Country that I have lived in for so many years. I stumbled across your website when I was looking for images to display in my house recently and I have to say that they blew me away. Iread with interestsome of the articles on this site that talk about capturing images ofmodern industrialisedWales and agree thatIt is of course unfortunate that parts of the Country like most other Countrieshave been forced to change landscape as a result of the need to cater for an ever growing population and the need to cope with energy demands. however, I think we should try and appreciate the beauty we still have in Wales and it is images like yours that have inspired me to get off my back side and see Wales properly for the first time. I can't imagine hanging a picture of the A55on a bank holiday on my living room wall, or a picture of Wylfa for that matter.I continue to tell friends and colleagues about your work and hope you continue to provide these beautiful images. I don't think we are ready for the crime scene investigators to start taking photos for us just yet

Gaabi has made the most salient point in regard to the American population as a whole (not just Welshmen in particular): Wales has no image. None. Zip. Doesn't exist. Give Wales any image whatsoever and you've improved the situation. The starting point is simply the Wales exists and it's near, but definitely not, England. Welsh societies may help, but not until enough people actually recognize their ancestors (thus themselves) as Welsh. So talk it up. Let people hear the words Wales and Welsh. If someone uses the word Celtic as a synonym for Irish, correct them. I did that with some Irishmen who got very pugnacious about it, but that's the Irish for ya Around here the small Welsh society puts up a tent at the Irish and Scots festivals just to make that point. Sooner or later it has to help create a buzz.

"SHOW the damage, the industrialisation, the rubbish, the jet skis and powerboats, the trails of 4x4s for twenty miles"

Agreed there's a place for this but on a tourist brochure? Detroit is an American city with a major image problem...here is their tourism site http://www.visitdetroit.com/ ...very bland! Here's some of what I saw when I was there:- Detroit Urban Decay . Some people go to Detroit precisely because of the urban dereliction and they presumably love the frisson of fear they experince as they wander through the burned out ruins. I would imagine however that these adventurous souls are in a minority.

Are there not corners of Wales that are still unspoiled and is it wrong to photograph them just beacuase there are boarded up council houses and former corner shops a few miles down the road? Forgive me if I'm over simplifying but I feel strongly that Wales has suffered from a lack lustre and woebegone image for far too long.

I havent been back to Wales for 10 years. When I visit again ( which I hope will be soon ) I confidently expect that the place will be different. In fact I'm counting on it because before I emigrated in 2001 Cardiff was improving rapidly and no longer resembled the sad and sorry place it was back in the 70's. I'm hoping that trend has continued BUT I recognise that some places will have changed for the worse. I expect that too.

Anyone who is looking for an idealised past is no more likely to find it in Wales than they are in Timbuctu. It may be the case that for some Americans hiraeth has been little more than a kind psychological projection of better times somehow mystically preserved in the old country. BUT if that is the case I would respectfully suggest that we are back to our starting point....how do we rebrand Wales to make it attractive and relevant in the 21st century WITHOUT mirepresentation and undue romanticism. Not sure piles of rubbish will help us with that.

Anyway thats my twopence worth I shall bow out of the tourist side of this debate because its not what I'm focused on. I'm much more concerned with Wales image amongst the population at large rather than with how it is viewed by the small numbers of persons who might view it as a potential tourist destination.

I though Graham'a images were gorgeous and Glyn has lots of beautiful landscape images as well. If you want it to look not American, do castles, we don't have those, although most of America looks nothing like Wales and only the Pacific NW I think has a similar coastline (although I've never been to Maine) so your coast shots are nice and look foreign and interesting.

I'm going to say something awful, which I say to Ceri over and over and I don't think he gets it:

Wales' image problem in the USA is that it doesn't have one. Americans mainly don't think badly of Wales, they never think of it all, because they don't know it exists.

This is good and bad. Bad because most people don't know it exists and don't ever think of it. Good because they don't have preconceived ideas about what Wales is and Wales can create its own image.

This is WHY Ceri and I made this network, why we started the west coast eisteddfod, why we do everything we're doing. Wales should have its OWN image, not Scotland's, not England's, not Ireland's. When we first met each other, Ceri asked me what's up with all the Irish stuff (St Patrick's Day is HUGE and in every bar in the country) and all the Scottish stuff (highland games, kilts, bagpipes all over) and why not Wales? And I told him that those cultures were "branded" here - the Irish with St Patrick's Day (which Americans celebrate by getting drunk and wearing green and by making shamrocks and leprechaun crafts in kids' schools) and the Scots with highland games, wearing kilts and bagpipes. I see people try to make St David's Day like St Patricks or make up Welsh kilts and fake clans and I think that's an awful mistake because Wales would always be "brand B" in the kilts and St David's Day arena - instead, what's WELSH? The Eisteddfod is Welsh, what else is Welsh? If we did do St David's Day, how could it be not the same as St Patricks?

For tourism purposes and selling "stuff", you need to promote what's different, what's Welsh. We already have plenty of our own junk and we're not going to want exactly the same thing we produce from somewhere else. We already have our own junkies, poverty, parking lots, poverty housing, plastic crap, etc. People WILL be more interested in something that's positive but especially something that's different. The other thing about Americans is that the European-US heritage is only 300-some years old, so your old stuff may bore the living pee out of you, who are used to it, but it's endlessly fascinating to us because we don't have any.

I don't live in Wales and I've never set foot there yet. All I can do is look at Wales online or in the form of the Welsh people I meet and try to see what's good, what I'll be interested in as an American and what makes you Welsh in my eyes and would do it for others? The art, the beautiful looking landscape, the castles, the fun of you all - bog snorkeling, cheese racing, the Mumbles mile and the lovely sweet people. What else?

RE: "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

Undeniably true but not altogether relevant. No one is looking for a time machine Of course Wales has changed and the whole of the rest of the world with it. Failure to embrace change leads to bitterness and a debilitating nostalgia for the 'good old days'. However old I get I will never submit to that. Better by far to stop wallowing in a past long dead and pay attention to what is happening in contemporary Wales and talk up the positive aspects of a nation that has always had to 'reinvent itself in every generation'.. Indeed this site was established precisely for that purpose. Nostalgia might generate a few tourist bucks here and there but AmeriCymru 'aint , and was never intended to be, 'How Green Was My Valley'.

One issue in America is the lack of an overall Welsh identity among people who do have Welsh ancestry, but often don't know it. The Welsh and the English came together in the earliest days of the colonies and the USA. They created together the dominant culture, seen here as English or British culture. Any Welsh elements were subsumed into the whole. This dominant culture is the one against which ethnic cultures are contrasted, against which they gain an identity. In the USA, the Irish and Scots have an ethnic identity. Those of English ancestry do not. Tourism to homelands is an important part of travel; it is also an important source of identity creation. But this only works for those who know something about their identity. The Wales Tourism board needs to recognize a need to create a Welsh identity in America out of those who are unaware of their Welsh roots. Something along the extremely broad lines of "Is Your Name Evans? Did You Know You Are Probably Welsh? Come And Find Out!" Or promoting Captain Morgan and claiming some pirating history. Most American assume he is English because that is all they know. Captain Morgan Spiced Rum has a large advertising compaign that does not mentions Wales. Can you imagine a Glenlivet ad that didn't mention Scptland? Again, the Welsh were such a part of the dominant culture that they can't be seen within it. When I meet another Lewis I ask, Are You Welsh? Just my little effort to raise the profile. Generally such people have no idea what they are, and may not care. Of course all this addresses only the identity issue among Welsh-Americans. Promoting Wales as a cultural destination, as Scotland does with the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is also very important. As well, promoting Wales as a "foreign" destination with it's own language, as opposed to England which is not here seen as "foreign". The Tourism Board has a great deal to do in distinguishing itself from England.

Hi Guys, reading Graham's original post closely, he is didn't ask about how America views Wales, in his words "Cymruphiles living overseas: 'How is Wales viewed where you are?'"

So what do you guys on AC think about Wales, some of you perhaps having not been here for years? Do you still have rosy coloured spectacles for a Welsh Hiraeth which would perhaps be shattered by modern Welsh development, or do you know already about the changes and threats going on in a modern industrial age over here ?

We are still some of the poorest counties in the whole of the UK yet there are pockets of extreme money around, which rarely filters don into the pockets of ordinary Welsh people. The landscape is under greater threat than ever before and quite rightly a huge debate is kicking off over the proposed mass siting of 60 x 400 foot high wind turbines right across rural Ynys Mon (Anglesey) which will create an unmissable industrial zone for all living on the island and anyone who walks the hills of Snowdonia. The new nuclear power station has already compulsorily purchased acres and acres of what was farm land, and a huge row is kicking off now with one farmer who refuses to leave as it's been his land for generations. This new Wylfa B will destroy even more stunning coastline and will now block public access which has been there for years.

We have councillors who are Hell bent on allowing more housing, yet more 'never to be rented' business parks on ancient land (so much so that near Holyhead an ancient cromlech will soon be in the middle of an industrial car park !! For God's sake we are being decimated thanks to poverty and the subsequent permission for almost any development as long as it provides jobs (which they rarely do BTW).

I chatted to an old quarryman in Deiniolen a few years back and he said there is nothing left of the culture which once made him feel a part of Welsh community. The days when quarrymen came home and shared a pannad over the fence at the bottom of the garden has long gone He said everyone used to know about ad care for everyone, but he now doesn't even know the neighbours two doors down!

Does anyone in the US care (unlikely as you all have your own problems to deal with quite rightly) but this IS modern Wales.

When you dream about the land of your fathers, what do you vision, and does it still exist ? What IS Welsh culture anymore that is substantially different from any other community. Thank God there is still the Welsh language but are the new Welsh teens and twenty somethings nurturing Welshness or a global image ? I suspect looking at my kids and their mix of cosmopolitan Welsh friends it's the latter, obsessed with gadgets, mobile phones and Hollywood style entertainment.

Graham I took a look at you images as you asked, and I assume you wanted honest feedback ? Whilst pretty, they are not going to convey a different sense of place, as they are still romantic and typical of much of the way Wales has been portrayed for generations. To a degree most photographers working in Wales are perpetuating the same ideal (read myth) of unspoilt landscape, (me included, at one level at least), so if you want to create an honest depiction of Wales you would need to radically rethink your approach to landscape, SHOW the damage, the industrialisation, the rubbish, the jet skis and powerboats, the trails of 4x4s for twenty miles descending on "Cheshire on Sea" formerly known as Abersoch, a place where native Welsh speakers have been out-priced and forced to leave their homes and homeland as the seriously rich invade. Depict the awful developments, the disgusting houses built on cliff tops and the sprawl of retail zones across once stunning land.

Of course if we are just talking about attracting tourists, the we can keep on lying and spreading the myth about perfect landscapes, as tourist authorities do the world over, they will only e

I visited Wales this past Summer and absolutely loved it. I wish I had come sooner. Nevertheless, I will return. As for how Wales is viewed in the United States, I feel that it is not on the radar screen. Most people only think of Wales when they hear news regarding the "Prince of Wales." Many have no idea of where Wales is located. In areas where there were many Welsh settlers, there is a higher level of interest/knowledge of Wales. My great grandmother came to the USA from Treorchy. Therefore, I grew up with Welsh tea cakes, St. David's Day, Sunday trips to the nearest Welsh Church (1 hour), and a loving grandmother who tried to teach us Welsh. I guess my point is that those who grew up with some Welsh connection have a great interest and pride for Wales. Those who did not most likely have no thoughts and view of Wales.

I've found myself getting drawn in to the Abergwyngregyn and the Princes of Gwyne dd debate and it seems to me that it is directly relevant to this discussion. How many people knew about the significance of Aber? We have a fascinating heritage and somehow manage to keep it low-key.

What would you do about in the USA? Given that many of our visitors are American, your views are very relevant.

(sorry about the font, I'll have to read the instructions when I find them)

I have to agree with both Graham and Ceridwen. I think in terms of promoting tourism they are both bang on the money.It is also important, in my opinion, to establish vital Welsh American traditions and to to that end we have been working to establish the West Coast Eisteddfod and ultimately a North American National Eisteddfod ( somewhat along the lines of Llangollen ) this side of the pond . We think that if Wales becomes the Celtic nation that recognises and rewards excellence in the arts this will go a long way toward remedying our 'image deficit' in America.

The Scots have their Highland Games and the Irish have St Patrick's Day. We need a national event, or series of national events, that identify and 'brand' us in the minds of the American public. What better way to do this than by organising large scale, 'live' story telling and poetry reading events. Preferably on licensed premises! After all it's in our blood