Roger Tiley

Roger Tiley is a Welsh documentary photographer. His work on documenting the coal mines of Wales and America has been used extensively in publications. Specifically during the UK miners' strike (1984-1985).

Tiley first worked in photography as an industrial photographer for Lucas Industries, a large car component company. He spent four years there and subsequently decided to specialise in documentary photography.

He studied at the School of Documentary Photography under Magnum photographer David Hurn.

On completion of the course in 1984, Tiley worked for a number of national newspapers and magazines, including The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian and The Observer. Much of his journalistic work was based on the miners strike in 1984/85.

Because of his work on the miners strike, he was commissioned, along with David Bailey, John Davies (photographer) and Paul Reas to produce "The Valleys Project", a collection of photographs reflecting life in the South Wales Valleys. They are meticulously annotated with context information and encompass every part of the miners' lives.

Since the 1980s, Tiley has concentrated on working on commissions for exhibitions, archive collections, television and book publication. Over the past three decades, Tiley has had work exhibited and published regularly in Europe and the US and is the author of three books.

His commissions include photographing the Welsh descendants living in Pennsylvania and covering extensively the mining communities of West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee.

He is now a former lecturer in photography, media studies and graphic design at Gower College Swansea, Wales. He has delivered lectures on his photographic practice in the UK and the US. He is also involved in delivering photography workshops on landscape and documentary photography.

Tiley was awarded a commission to photograph the manufactured coast-scape in Wales. For the year-long project He travelled around the coastline of Wales to make photographs of the way the coast line has been adapted to cater for twenty-first-century needs. This included photographing industrial manufacturing plants, the tourism industry and the need for power generation. The work was exhibited in Europe and the UK.

Tiley was the only photographer allowed to photograph underground on the coal face of the last deep coal mine in the UK, Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire. This work was commissioned by Keo Films, London, who made a BBC documentary titled 'The Last Miners'. It was also published as a book by 2Ten Books.

Tiley has also produced and directed moving image.

His work has been featured on a number of television and radio features in the UK, Europe and the US.

Tiley worked on a project called Thirty Years Ago, re-visiting the mining communities he photographed thirty years ago and making portraits of former miners, along with people involved in mining today. His work is closely linked to his upbringing in the south Wales valleys. He is very proud of his birthplace. To this day, he supports the miners and feels sad to see the demise of the industrial valleys.

• Portraits of Coal Miners - Thirty Years Ago. 2Ten Books.
• Travelling Through Coal Creek. 2Ten Books. With a foreword by Patricia D Beaver and an essay by Tiley.