Ireland – Camera Obscura

Strawboys, by Gráinne Quinlan

Gráinne Quinlan — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:46:51 +0000

Athlone Strawboys, County Westmeath
© Gráinne Quinlan
Please visit Strawboys, by Gráinne Quinlan for the full size image.

Text and photos by Gráinne Quinlan.

I have always enjoyed the thrill of combining adventurous travel with my love of photography. Photographing the Irish Strawboys offered this to me and more, taking me on an Alice in Wonderland adventure — an unimaginable journey that brought me to parts of Ireland, my home country, which I had never seen before and where I met with characters who will forever stay etched on my mind — the Strawboys.

Aughakillymaude Mummers, Fermanagh
© Gráinne Quinlan
Please visit Strawboys, by Gráinne Quinlan for the full size image.

My engagement with the Strawboys opened the door to a world unknown to me — a world of exuberant costume and magnetic performance going beyond any spectacle I had seen before, certainly in Ireland or indeed Europe.

The lead up to my ‘discovery’ of the Irish Strawboys is perhaps equally interesting and deserves its own part in this story.

Aughakillymaude Mummers, Fermanagh
© Gráinne Quinlan
Please visit Strawboys, by Gráinne Quinlan for the full size image.

I had recently submitted my thesis in my final year in my photography degree at the Dublin Instititue of Technology, after spending almost twelve months of arduous writing, involving late nights, reedits and copious amounts of caffeine.

My chosen subject was the great Malian photographer Seydou Keita. For months I had immersed myself in Keita’s stunning imagery and style. My research immersed me in the culture of Mali — its music, sculpture and paintings — a cultural kaleidoscope that is as uplifting as it is inspiring.

Balina Strawboys, County Mayo
© Gráinne Quinlan
Please visit Strawboys, by Gráinne Quinlan for the full size image.

In addition to Keitas’ kinetic imagery, with his choice of simple backdrop and subjects
that appear in front of the camera with ease and grace, I spent hours poring over images of the Dogon tribes people. The esoteric culture of the Dogon tribe in southern Mali, is enthralling to the eyes and ears unfamiliar with such practices. Their sensually detailed carved masks and ruffled costumes filled me with wonder and fueled a curiosity in me of masking traditions.

Cleamairí an Chorráin (The Currane Strawboys), County Mayo
© Gráinne Quinlan
Please visit Strawboys, by Gráinne Quinlan for the full size image.

By January 2012, each of the fourth year photography students at D.I.T were let loose to fully concentrate on their photographic practice and subject of their own choice. Ideas for projects were considered in trepidation as each student was aware that the resulting images would be displayed in National Photographic Archive and in Dublin’s Gallery of Photography. As a culmination of four years intense study, it needed to pack a visual punch for audience members alike be they family, friends and even the wider general public.

Fingal Mummers, North County Dublin
© Gráinne Quinlan
Please visit Strawboys, by Gráinne Quinlan for the full size image.

During my search for a suitably visual striking topic and in line with my peeked interested in masking, I began to hear of a strange custom involving strikingly disguised people who attended weddings in the West of Ireland — particulary County Mayo where the tradition remains prevalent today. During the celebrations these masked Strawboys, as I learned they were called, would arrive unannounced to the reception and provide entertainment through song, dance and poetry to the surprised onlookers who, no doubt, would have been particularly amazed by their elaborate costumes.

Fingal Mummers, North County Dublin
© Gráinne Quinlan
Please visit Strawboys, by Gráinne Quinlan for the full size image.

My search for images of the Strawboys invariably indicated that the highly visual Strawboy performance had largely only ever been captured by amateurs and the occasional local photographer. It was the idea that this unique performance had only ever been captured by amateurs that instilled in me an eagerness to record this colourful practice formally, away from the distractions of the performance.

Historically, the tradition was most prevalent in rural areas of Ireland. The Strawboys would arrive at a bridal breakfast party in the brides home, sometimes down a chimney or by banging loudly on the front door with a mock menacing tone. Disguised in masks made of straw — a cheap material readily available in Ireland at the time — the Strawboys would regale the wedding guests with song and horseplay. Often they would be uninvited neighbours looking to gain access to the celebration and to partake of the refreshments on offer in return for lively entertainment.

Fingle Mummers, County Dublin
© Gráinne Quinlan
Please visit Strawboys, by Gráinne Quinlan for the full size image.

Archival letters held at the National Folklore Collection in the University College of Dublin (UCD) suggest that many people in rural Ireland would expect the Strawboys arrival at any given wedding reception and in some cases despite the guise, their identity was clear to all through body shape and spoken word. By the 50s however, the tradition had petered out in many areas with mass emigration and a change in farming practices that led to the demise of straw.

John Street Wrenboys, Dingle, Kerry
© Gráinne Quinlan
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Once I began to reach out and contact the still existing Strawboy troupes, much to my delight, my phone calls where always greeted with an eager and welcoming response: “No problem, how many Strawboys do you want for your photo?”.

Arranging visits to various parts of rural Ireland where the Strawboy tradition is still practiced was a photographer’s dream. I travelled over the Connor Pass in County Kerry, had tea with an eighty year old Strawboy in his bucolic kitchen in County Fermanagh and returned to Dublin with my very own strawmask gifted to me by the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Belfast.

Sligo Strawboys, County Sligo
© Gráinne Quinlan
Please visit Strawboys, by Gráinne Quinlan for the full size image.

The people I met, are as one might suspect, entertaining storytellers or seanchaí’s — the Irish word for storyteller. After agreeing to sit for a formal portrait they told tales and gave reason for their Strawboy participation. Many of the stories recalled were humble, honest and humorous. Not only does the tradition allow group members to practice music and song, it offers to a means to socialize and to engage with a rural community that otherwise stays in the confines of a home.

Beneath the fears and worries attached to exhibiting, intuitively I felt that exhibiting portraits of Stawboys, would remind viewers of photography’s potent power. It was has always been my belief that photography’s greatest attribute is its ability to educate people, in as much as literature or the spoken word. The Strawboy tradition that I focused on was largely unknown — an almost forgotten anachronism from a different time in Ireland. This was certainly true amongst the groups of people that I shared the idea with, and for this reason I felt compelled to follow my idea.

The Armagh Rhymers, Armagh
© Gráinne Quinlan
Please visit Strawboys, by Gráinne Quinlan for the full size image.

In terms of how I approached each portrait, I was able to drawing inspiration from my recent studies. Using a tried and tested formula — certainly influenced by Keita — I placed the emphasis on the performer’s visual presentation rather than the commotion of an energetic performance. The format of a formal portrait, I like to think, shows the Strawboys as stately and noble looking befitting their striking and imposing visual aesthetic.

For more photos and stories, please visit Gráinne Quinlan website.

The Erris Strawboys, County Mayo
© Gráinne Quinlan
Please visit Strawboys, by Gráinne Quinlan for the full size image.

The Park, by Steven Nestor

Steven Nestor — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 19:45:50 +0000

Text and photos by Steven Nestor.

Larger than New York’s Central Park, though smaller than Paris’s Bois de Boulogne, at 1,697 acres Dublin’s Phoenix Park is one of the largest enclosed public parks in the world. For 350 years since being established by King Charles II in 1662 as a royal deer park the park has miraculously survived largely intact. All the more impressive given the Irish Republic’s occasionally cavalier attitude towards places of beauty and historical sites (especially from the days of the British Empire). Deserving or not, now a request has been made to declare the Phoenix Park a UNESCO world heritage site.

For most of my life, however, the park was only ever entered by car either because it was a space that needed to be crossed, or to visit the zoo near the main entrance. It was only in 2007 that I really began to go to the park and explore it. This late coming to the park was probably on account of my being part of that Irish generation whose mind-set was always looking abroad, having dismissed most of what was on offer at home (at times not without good reason). Five years on from my initial visits and the park’s scale and features still impress. Though it is expansive and “wild” in places, it can also be experienced and viewed simply as an open green space, a divided place, a place for leisurely pursuits and (for the city’s fringe) a place of exchange. For the wanderer it offers peace and escape in its immensity from a hectic city held off by its perimeter walls. While Dublin is largely visually obscured, from most parts of the park two imposing structures of religion and empire – the Papal Cross and Wellington’s monument – dominate. Although I have deliberately not properly or fully engaged with other structures in the park, these two could not be ignored, nor do they allow themselves to be ignored.

In 2008 I began to examine the Wellington Monument. At an impressive 62 meters in height the obelisk commemorates the Waterloo and Indian victories of the Irish-born 1st Duke of Wellington. It is the largest obelisk in Europe and would have been even higher had public funding not run out. With its surrounding open expanse it naturally semaphores to become a focal point for day-trippers, loners, soccer matches and picnics. For those interested in history and architecture it is a draw, but it seems to me that the majority come to it just because it is such a huge structure whose steps can be sat on and whose base can be climbed. As I was so used to seeing the obelisk, photographing it was quite a challenge and it required considerable concentration to defamiliarize myself with it and be re-impressed. This defamiliarization was then extended to the rest of the park, though that was somewhat easier in the earlier stages as I was largely only familiar with it as a place name.

When Pope John Paul II visited Ireland in 1979 he said mass in the Phoenix Park to a third of the country’s overwhelmingly Catholic population, including my very young self. For me its significance is remembering getting up before dawn with my father to get the train to Dublin and the scouts ushering the endless waves of the faithful arriving at the park. And I remember somebody fainting and the radios tuned in to get news of the Pope’s arrival. And I recall being shocked at the size of a giant excrement filled trench below the temporary toilets. Nonetheless, for a poor nation with broken roads and hand-me-down shoes the park and Ireland were on the world map and today a huge white cross stands dominating on a knoll marking the spot where the altar was. Today also, Ireland no longer has a Vatican ambassador and the Catholic Church seems to be inexorably and agonizingly imploding. Nonetheless, there is often a bouquet tied to the base of the cross, care of Dublin’s grateful Polish population.

Beyond these two imposing structures, about one third of the park is covered by trees, such as oak, beech and horse chestnut as well as a wide variety of wildlife habitats. As so little of Ireland is under forest (especially broad leaf) for me this variety, both gnarled in isolation and sheltered in copses, has a particular draw and fascination. Being surrounded by a city of over a million inhabitants there is something almost unexpected in their presence, along with the many roaming deer. There is also something unfamiliar in the character of the park’s trees: something you expect to find far beyond a city’s limits. In my exploration of the park I initially expected that I would shoot one place after another to come up with something representing a uniform topographical map. Instead and despite (or because of) the park’s scale I often returned to the same spots, re-photographing the same tree/s.

The Park has been about immersing myself into the vastness of its space and trying to make sense of the volume behind the statistics and history. Rather than use the very latest in digital photography I very deliberately decided to use a variety of analogue formats and films. For the most part square medium format was used to hold this work together, but I also used well out of date film, obsolete 126 film and a lens-less Vrede box camera. I felt that in concert their use helped me to better anchor my vision and work into this 350-year-old park. Using these antiquated photographic technologies brings me to the very edge of a crumbling inverse frontier, resulting in a truer representation of this enormous historical space. I also did not attempt to hide the shadow of my presence in some images so as to leave a small personal trace of my presence within this body of work. In addition to that I also chose on occasion to photograph out of focus to reflect my own myopia as well as for aesthetical interpretations.

My work is about recording this parkland and all that is encountered in the process. It is about fully entering the terrain and being completely absorbed by place and moment, even though the Phoenix Park itself is always going to be bigger than the Park.

For more information and photos please visit Steven Nestor website.

The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell

Eamonn Farrell — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 05:07:38 +0000

State Support. Ulorin Vex in Dublin City.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

Text and photos by Eamonn Farrell.

My first real interest in photography as opposed to taking photos of my children, came about as a result of the coverage of the Vietnam War by the likes of Don McCullin, Larry Burrows and Eddie Adams etc. In the first instance it was both admiration and disbelieve that men and women could put themselves at such risk to life and limb in pursuance of an image.

Energising. Iveta T in County Waterford.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

And secondly, the shocking power of the images of death, destruction, fear, bravery, cowardice and cruelty, that they managed to capture in situations where putting your head up to take a photo, was akin to suicide. The impact of those images and their effect in changing public opinion about the war, convinced me that the still image could be a powerful force in changing the world. And in Ireland a lot of change was required particularly in relation to the position of women in society.

Harvest. Ulorin Vex in County Offaly.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

I went on to become a freelance photojournalist in Dublin, setting up a small agency with my brother Brian, also a photographer and eventually both of us became picture editors of separate Sunday newspapers. A few years later I left to set up a new agency photocall Ireland concentrating on coverage of politics, business and the arts. During this time the realities of trying to make a living from professional photography and providing for your family left no time to pursue your own personal photographic interests.

Shelter. Ulorin Vex in County Donegal.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

Like other developed countries, control of photographic images by the spin doctors of politics and business, had moved onto the same level as the music and celebrity industry. The opportunity to capture meaningful and insightful images was fast disappearing. Control of the media by the creative filtering of what was made available to it, was the modus operandi of a new and growing profession – the PR Guru. The enjoyment and excitement of working in the news media was fast disappearing for me. Thankfully I was now reaching a stage in my life where there were less demands on me financially and I could at last take time out to work on personal projects which were not dependent on a financial return.

Wonderland. Roswell Ivory in County Wicklow.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

In 2009 I started a project, which has the working title, The Nude in the Irish Landscape. I am using the female form to represent the human species and how we relate to our natural and man made environment. By placing the naked model outdoors in the landscape I am drawing attention to how vulnerable we are as a species, when stripped of our clothing, mobile phones and iPads. Alone and naked we have to deal with the powerfull forces of nature, increasingly transmuted as a result of our greed and power hungry rape and abuse of the beautiful planet on which we live. I am trying to get across the simple message – without a healthy planet earth we will die. But without us it would happily live on, perhaps forever.

Birth. Ulorin Vex in County Donegal.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

Great idea, maybe! But where was I to get models who were prepared to pose naked outdoors in cold, wet and windy Ireland? Most photographers know women – girlfriends, wives or partners – who are prepared to pose for them indoors. Outdoors is another matter entirely. Yes there are art nude models in Ireland. But very few at the level required to shoot in up to five locations a day. Confident enough not to be distracted when interrupted by humans or animals (hill-walkers, farmers, dogs, cows, donkeys etc). Capable of gritting their teeth (but not showing it), when working in wind and rain. And happy to put up with cuts, bruises, scrapes and bites.

Natural Resource. Monika T in County Wicklow.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

With a few notable exceptions I had to go abroad and use models from England, Europe and America. And make heavy use of alternative model sites such as Model Mayhem. In the process I met some wonderful women, dedicated to their art and prepared to push their bodies to the limit to produce an image worthy of their input.

Lands End. Raphaella McNamara in County Kerry.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

I was very lucky that the first two models I worked with were at the very top of their profession and set the standard for others to follow. I shot Ulorin Vex over three days in County Donegal when we were blessed with the usual Irish summer weather: four seasons in one hour! At least it gave us a bit of everything to work with. Ulorin is not only a top class model with the ability to change her look at will, but she is also brave to the point of endangerment.

Never Never Land. Ella Rose in a Ghost Estate in County Leitrim.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

I worked with Ivory Flame in November of 2009 for two days. It was wet, windy and freezing cold. There was no four seasons in one hour. Just two days of hard winter weather. Her beautiful white skin was turning blue. I thought her nose was going to fall off. But she continued to pose in the most difficult conditions, producing great images.

Dispossessed. Ella Rose in Dublin City.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

When it was all over she told me she would never work in Ireland outdoors again. Two years later I convinced her to come back during the summer, telling her that we would get blue skies on the Aran Islands. I lied and it rained and rained. Ireland is a wet and windy land. Will she ever come back again. I don’t know, but feel free to ask her.

Bog Cotton Rising. Juchi in County Offaly.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

There were of course issues, some technical, some aesthetic. You spend days searching for suitable locations and find one that works with great mood and skies etc. You book the model and she arrives (usually for two days at a time), drive to the location and there is no sky, just a dull grey flat ceiling. What do you do? Likewise, when after hours of shooting, the model has hit the perfect pose, but at the same moment a cloud has cast a dark shadow over a critical aspect of the landscape. The model pleads for the shot showing her perfect pose, but you know you have to go with the less perfect one which shows the landscape to better effect. In the end it was always a compromise, understanding that it was never less than a union between model, landscape and photographer.

Awakening. Ivory Flame in County Kildare.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

As time passed and I entered year three of the project I became more conscious of the fact that I should incorporate some sense of the economic and social devastation wrought on the people of Ireland by the reckless and greedy behaviour of a cabal of bankers, developers and politicians. This entailed the use of models in built up urban areas, which presented more difficult problems than those encountered in a rural landscape. When you add into the mix the conservative view which many in Ireland still have regarding the exposure of the naked body, it put extra demands on the professionalism of the art nude models with whom I worked.

Wasted. Mika Meiri in County Mayo.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

Finally there is the issue of the genre of art nude within the framework of art photography in Ireland. There are several fine art nude photographers here. To a large extent we work on the fringes of the art world. Silent, unobtrusive, unseen. This despite the exalted position of such photographers as Man Ray, Helmut Newton, Edward Weston, Andre Kertesz, Manuel Alveraz Bravo and Lucien Clergue on the international stage. The time has come for art nude photographers in Ireland to emerge from the woodwork and for curators to be brave enough to embrace the challenge of breaking a taboo.

For more informations and photos of nudes in the Irish landscape, please visit Eamonn Farrell website.

Survival. Monika T in County Wicklow.
© Eamonn Farrell
Please visit The Nude in the Irish Landscape, by Eamonn Farrell for the full size image.

Fair Trade, by Kenneth O Halloran

Kenneth O Halloran — Sat, 05 May 2012 16:04:03 +0000

Text and photos by Kenneth O Halloran.

I became interested in photography at a young age and was encouraged by my mother to pursue it as a career, although my Dad was rather less enthusiastic.

I come from a small village in the West of Ireland and my father is the local undertaker, as well as running a small shop. It’s the sort of place where everyone knows everyone else. During my teens I fell into the role of village photographer recording local horse shows, fetes, communion and confirmation ceremonies. There were some expectations at home that I might a school teacher, following a well worn path, but I wanted to do photography.

I completed a course in commercial photography in Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design (now IADT) in Dublin. After graduating I went on to work with a photographic agency, Press 22, in Limerick.

Given the nature of the job I quickly gained a lot of experience of all aspects of photography particularly news photography since the agency serviced all the national and some of the international press. I remember covering everything from Greyhound meetings to the visit of major dignataries such as Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Regan.

Following that I moved to Dublin. After freelancing for a time I was staffed in Independent Newspapers in Dublin working there for 15 years. During that time I covered all the usual markings ranging from news to sport, with regular trips to the North to cover the conflict there and covered many European and World soccer championships.

During that time I also made numerous trips with Irish Aid Agency GOAL to areas of civil unrest and conflict. The first of these was to Rwanda in 1994 and subsequently to Iraq following the US invasion of Afghanistan, East Timor, Kosovo and Banda Ache in Indonesia following the Tsunami. These were exciting places to visit, particularly when the day to day newspaper routine could become so mundane.

I built up a good relationship with the aid agency and therefore would end up in these places fairly early on, involved right at the heart of whatever was happening which appealed to my youthful search for excitement and difference. At the time I believed that some of the images I took might end up making some difference.

I began to tire of the daily grind of news photography and increasing cutbacks changed the nature of the business. Increasingly we spent our time doing “at home” feature photographs with the excitement gone out of the job. The culture of celebrity meant I saw far more red carpet events than getting to cover things of any substance.

I took a leave of absence in 2004 and moved to Madrid to my then Spanish girlfriend with girl. Christina’s family came from a small town outside of Madrid and her father Angel had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in his early 50s and was ill for ten years before he died.

Obviously I saw first hand how this had devastated the family and the care involved. Almost without knowing it I had begun a project which was markedly different from anything I had done previously which was an intimate portrayal of a man’s illness and it’s affects on his family and his dignity – as a father, husband and friend. It also affected my relationship because we spent so much time in the house because Christina helped to care for him spent right up to his death. I also remember it as a portrayal of female strength, not just physically but also emotionally for Christina and her mother Dioni.

While in Spain I came across Photo España — the annual summer photography festival in Madrid. I went to see exhibitions by Martin Parr, Massimo Vitali, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin to name a few.

They opened my eyes to a new style of photography that I was totally unaware of before. I had been working in the traditional documentary style of photography up to this point. I took a couple of workshops and learned the importance of spending time working on long term projects. This led to a renewed enthusiasm and passion for the medium, and a shift in how I approached photography, and since then I have been working on a number of projects.

My curiosity about photography deepened and as a result I have now have a fine library of photographic books showing the different styles and approaches. I also did a number of my own projects, over a long time period such as the series featuring my family with an emphasis on my Dad, Micheal, in his role as a local undertaker and shopkeeper.

Local undertakers frequently had to take on a second business to supplement their income and in my father’s case it was a drapery shop. The shop keeping part of the business is now closed, and its decline is also something which I photographed.

Faith plays a huge role in our family. To many people the role of undertaker can be a strange and even frightening one but its something that I grew up with. The morgue is just behind our kitchen and I can remember coming home from school as a young lad and going in to see who was dead.

This project also gave the excuse to spend more time with my family and record the significant events which occurred including deaths and births and the cycle of life.

I also developed an interest in portraiture. Given my own background I find myself drawn to exploring the contrast between urban and rural and with a particular emphasis on identity. The images in this project, which involves country fairs around Ireland, particularly explore our cultural identity. These fairs are a curious combination of an Ireland from a by gone era yet with many of the trappings of modernity.

I began the fair series 2009 and plan to continue with the project.

Please visit Kenneth O Halloran website for more photos and stories.

In search of the Common Place, by Eoin O Conaill

Eoin O Conaill — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 05:37:12 +0000

Text and photographs by Eoin O Conaill.

As an outline to my style of work and working I can explain how my attraction to photographing the everyday landscape began. I did not have a strong interest in photography from a young age and in truth happened upon a course in photography and continued from this course to a degree and to a point where I held a qualification and a strong idea of what I wanted to say but was unsure how to say it. I wanted to look at the landscape around me, to explore my own country and in many ways to try to gain a better understanding of what it is to be Irish and where I fit into all of this. I had always been drawn to photography and art that gave me space to interpret images in my own way, work that did not have all the answers but had plenty of questions. A phrase by Winogrand I heard recently describes this very well “nothing is as mysterious as a fact clearly described”. The likes of Walker Evans and Stephen Shore and an Irish painter Martin Gale presented scenes with a strong sense of intrigue that drew you in to try to interpret what the artist was saying. Very direct composition yet quiet, and crossing the lines between art, documentary and archive, these works offered a way for me to examine the immediate world around me and to grasp how the collective identity of place can be explored through photography.

The need to photograph around my home country Ireland came about a number of years after finishing my studies. My job meant that I traveled around my native city Dublin for hours on end – sitting in traffic on wet evening or early winter mornings. These moments of being stuck in in-between places forced me to look around at the everyday spaces we inhabit. The feeling and the ambiance – those dull yet intense moments when you glimpse something special in a place you have passed a thousand times. The landscape around us encapsulates history in the physical form and can be viewed in many different ways, a simple street scene on the outskirts of Dublin holds so many different meanings and histories when viewed by an elderly resident of the area, a young person newly arrived in the area or a tourist passing through. I am constantly trying to grasp what is of interest in a scene, looking deeper to understand the layers within the landscape, where architecture, history, politics, culture and personality come together. I had also not seen the reality of Irish weather incorporated within contemporary Irish photography and I wanted to be true to this aspect of living on an island facing the Atlantic Ocean where rain and mist come to dominate at certain times of the year.

This project “Common Place” is about photographing the places we pass daily, the estates and side streets that we often take no notice of but that contain all the information necessary to highlight the political and social issues that are prevalent in the country. This project was made in 2006-2007 during the height of the economic boom where prosperity had transformed many of the notions that were seen as “Irish” and certainly the perception of ourselves as a nation and of this country internationally was changing. It felt almost like a re branding exercise was in motion, this idea of the modern cosmopolitan country of landmark developments were being pushed to the fore. I wanted to highlight the distance I believed existed between the reality of our everyday existence and the stereotype of place, recognizing the large changes occurring both culturally, socially and physically without making this change the sole focus of the work. This project therefore addresses the recurring enigma of trying to document and represent social and physical change without the obvious visual pointers but looking instead to the everyday landscape where buildings wait to be transformed, where subtle changes hint at what has passed and what is to come, where the optimism and base reality of human existance are witnessed as a people survive, possibly strive and generally get by.

This is a shot taken on the edge of a housing estate in the Moyross area of Limerick city. Molloy’s shows a typical housing estate and is a type of vernacular architecture that can be witnessed on the outskirts of many towns and cities throughout Ireland. This image demonstrates many of the points I am making in my work. In the left middle distance the small detail of a big new landmark office development can be seen on the skyline. However these are isolated areas marked for development and the rest of the country remains very much the same where there is a gulf between what is happening in isolated areas and what is happening everywhere else is evident. Development on the ground show a more subtle addition and layering of the architecture where a few new houses have been attached to the older structures – the constant layering of the built environment where an extension is built here or a new house there will form the legacy to the now distant years of prosperity in the general landscape.

Car Park Attendant, Derry
© Eoin O Conaill
Please visit In search of the Common Place, by Eoin O Conaill for the full size image.

The image Car Park Attendant, Derry, highlights the contradiction inherent within the landscape where the subtle shift can be witness as the local is being overtaken by the global. Where the attendant sits in his hut, not yet replaced by the smart-card speed of the newer multi-story car-parks and as in Molloys, the local small privately owned shops have not yet been swallowed by the large shop multiples and not yet been re branded as a Spar, Centra or Mace – soon to happen. Despite the rapid sweep of global processes and pressures, the local and human still holds some sway.

As with all of my works, I find that I work best as an explorer searching for landscapes that are visually interesting and speak of a place and time. I don’t believe it is possible to pin point beforehand the photograph or project you want to make or that it is possible to go out with a direct point or message that you hope to visualize. For me the phrase “ ideas emerge through discovery” is important as you must look deeply and photograph heavily to find in the landscape what is important to the body of photographs you are working on. For example this work began as a much wider and more open exploration of the landscape of Ireland that gradually emerged into the project Common Place. The aim was very much that exploration, a way for me to look at the landscape that I am so familiar with to try to figure my place within it – to discover my view of it. Like any creative fields, you begin with an idea that will evolve and both expand and contract during the course of the project, finishing at the point where the final edit takes place.

A recent commission on a small Island in southern Ireland has brought me away from the more general views witnessed in “Common Place” to a more personal, more challenging piece of work in certain ways. Again the focus is firmly on the everyday space and to the subtle views of where people live, work and spend time but this project takes on a more inclusive and personal viewpoint where I am trying to highlight what factors combine to create a community and an identity of place.

This work will be exhibited in the coming months and a larger selection of the work is included on my website www.eoinoconaill.com.