The Valleys is a beautifully- produced collection of more than a hundred colour photographs selected from several thousand images made during  five years by Anthony Stokes. Stokes’ pictures reveal a unique and richly-coloured vernacular where the histories of The Valleys’ townscapes and landscapes are overlaid with decades of modifications. The book’s introduction is written by Iain Sinclair, distinguished writer and poet, brought up in Maesteg, now based in London. 

“This collection draws out and explores in a distinct and personal way the idiosyncratic beauty which outsiders sometimes glimpse in the visual tensions of the Valleys’ landscape – tension between light and dark, rural and urban, decay and renewal, commonality and individuation.” Peter Lord, Planet, October 07