8X’s

"8x's" is the local name for the ex-ammunitions storage site in Absalom and Bardsley's hometown of Bridgend in South Wales. The site consisted of seven tunnels and since opening in 1939 it fulfilled multiple functions including a nuclear shelter during the Cold War. Today, all but two tunnels are destroyed. 8x's was a setting for Absalom and Bardsley's childhood adventures and in this book they combine photography, newspaper articles, interviews and snapshots to revisit its multiple histories. The result is an original map of a post-war Welsh landscape employing nostalgia, irony and myth. Ben Absalom, born in 1986, and Sam Bardsley, born in 1984, studied at the University of Wales and the University of Brighton respectively. They have exhibited at Brighton Photo Fringe, the National Eisteddfod of Wales and Brickhouse Gallery in London. In 2010 Absalom and Bardsley were awarded the inaugural Steidl Student Book Award.