City of Portraits, a decade in the making, celebrates tightknit community in tiny Welsh city. But joyful project had sad beginnings

From a distance, they look like vivid pieces of abstract art – but move a little closer and dozens of small, characterful portraits shine out of the work.

The ambitious idea of the City of Portraits (Dinas Portreadau) project, a decade in the making and nowhere near complete, is to record the faces of all 1,800 people who live in Britain’s smallest city, St Davids in south-west Wales.