memory lane

It felt significant to be in the Photographers Gallery visiting this year's Deutsche Borse show. I last attended two long years ago, in the early weeks of the pandemic. It some ways everything was back to what it was, but I sense there is still an awareness of social space. Not quite the choerography of lockdown, more a heightened politeness. 

It was a visit that prompted memories in another way too. I was particular interested to see Whatever You Say, Say Nothing by Gilles Peres.

Having spent my childhood summer holidays in Ireland, split between the north and west of the country, the images had a resonance as both reflections of experience but also representations of a reality that was not that long ago. 

The arrangement of the room, the use of the walls of the space and one across the centre, accentuated the significance of that form in the narrative of The Troubles, serving as a division, a hiding place, a canvas. The images were presented as excerpts from the structure of the book.of 22 fictional days. The text is woven into the display to create a richer, and more disturbing, experience. 

 

I also appreciated the production of the images, in an almost bllboard style. Another acknowledgement of the street roots of the work. Certainly not the preciousness of a high end gallery and another remider of an early show of my work.

 

It was good to be back.

a cruel beauty

It's that time of year for me to enjoy the guilty pleasures of the photobooks I've picked up over the years. I say guilty as they do feel like an indulgence. Often bought on a whim, they still serve as an inspiration. I don't have a most wanted set and I don't really keep up with the latest releases, apart from the ubiquitous lists at this time of year. I just tend to let them find me. 

So it was with Krass Clement's Drum. 

The circumstances in which the photographs were taken have a romanticism underpinned by a sense of absence and loss. Arguably that's a reflection of a lot of cultures not just Irish but it's one I have to say I identify with. The world depicted by the images evokes memories of not just back home but here in London in the world my dad and his compatriots recreated.

I was taken aback when I found the work was made in 1991. It's space borrowing time from another dimension. Ireland again. I recall the disorientation of entering bars - and homes - like that. A certain theatricality to the arrangement of the room, the order of who sits where, the silence.

It's interesting how much the analysis I've read is about the photographer's empathy with the others in the bar. Each an outsider in their own way. A form of reflective photojournalism. Not judging. Observing a ritual. 

Bearing witness. 

home again

I'm always interested in work of Irish photographers so I was really pleased to see Eamonn Doyle and his collaborators speak at Photo London last week, just after I discovered The Republic by Seamus Murphy. I'm shamefully late finding out about Murphy's work so I have to thank Ben Smith's Little Voice podcast. Recommended listening.

Each of their bodies of work are fascinating - and timely - for me. As well as my ongoing project on European citizens, this year's show for my local photography group is on the theme of Home which I'm using as an opportunity to think about my own roots.

My mum Kate passed away two years ago. A migrant from Galway in the 1950s as my dad was from the north of Ireland it was a given for me that she'd be buried in the place she was born and raised in. The word home was always understood in our house as Ireland. On reflection it's an obvious sign of the dislocation of our lives.

To portray that in a single image presents a challenge, for me at least but hey it's one of the reasons for joining the group. I could look at constructing an image, perhaps a still life of an object, to symbolise my emotions. Perhaps it's more of a collage of different elements. Yesterday I heard a word I hadn't in a long time. Kaleidoscope. It really brought back a memory of one I had as a child. As well as the act of losing oneself in a miniature world of shifting shapes it had a maracas-like quality when you shook the little crystals inside. Simple pleasures.

An alternative route, inevitable in a way, is a landscape image. I say inevitable as land has both political and personal resonance, as it has I'd guess for many emigrant people. It's the place you left and yet it still has a magnetism that draws you back, sometimes despite yourself. 

I've taken landscape before as holiday snaps, scenic views for the record, with a visual language of fine art oil paintings. None that I ever feel really engaged in the way I do my city pictures. Too proud a townie to be bothered with nature. Perhaps it's time to revisit that. 

Murphy's book is inspiring for me in this regard. I just needed to see the cover image and it was interesting to hear him talk about that on the podcast as it appeared at a moment when he had real doubts about continuing the project, about his work being good enough to justify its subject. Like a vision he came across this particular stretch of road - that he could never find again - and he was on his way.

Doyle's work really made a splash about five years ago and I was really pleased to see the manner of how he presented his work firstly at Arles and now when I saw it in London. I've considered how to present urban/city/street work and never felt comfortable with a purist white wall gallery experience. In fact my first effort back in the late 80s was at a former synagogue in Spitalfields where I photocopied and pasted my pictures across sheets of re-purposed corrugated iron in the basement. A reasonable DIY first attempt at an installation but writing this now has really made me think of what more I could (still?) do.

I wasn't aware, ignorantly, again, of K a subsequent project by Doyle inspired by the death of his mother Kathryn. It's in a way figurative but certainly of the landscape as well. The result is an imaginative contemplation of a woman's life. Something personal but co-created with two friends as a multi-sensory piece of work.

So all in all a timely - as always - intervention of art and life. I wonder if photography for me is less about making sense of the world around me and more about making sense of myself. 

Or does everyone think that.

Do you?

power of love

I've neglected writing about my roots for a while now. Granted they're bubbling beneath my current project but the death of my mum almost two years ago seems to have consciously or not put that to one side. In fact that's the subject of a blog post that's been in draft for over a year now following my discovery of a wonderful book by Paul Treacy called SE26 at the 2nd London Photography Symposum.

Paul lives in a part of south London my mum spent her last weeks in. The photographs that make up his book are, for me, a beautiful and evocative reflection on the time I spent with her in and around that area. It's a special book even without the connection I made to it as it's a portrait of a neighbourhood as lived in by the photographer. Each image stands alone but you can appreciate it is part of a larger experience and set of narratives you're privileged to glimpse into and wonder about.

In the serendipitous way I love life works my interest in anything street was piqued by the publication of How Graffiti Saved My Dad's Life. It's both an important document of contemporary social commentary across the landscape of London and a love letter from a daughter to a father commemorating celebrating his passion and her efforts to sustain it through his terminal illness.

I found the story an inspirational illustration of how pictures can act as a bridge between different worlds on so many levels and to its viewers in so many different ways. What's that sound? Ah, just another echo of Ambiguous.

My own connection was that while reading the book it became evident that the wonderful photographer was in the same hospice as my mum at around the same time. It gave me an illogical sense of comfort and a reconnection with both the power of photography...and the power of love too.

looking for a new Europe

My reflections at the end of last year have led me to looking at my work in a bigger context. For a long time I resisted any kind of interpretation of my work. Hey this blog was the cause/effect of doing just that.

My idea is to develop a body of work around people in cities – no surprise there – but recognising Europe is in a particular period of change. European cities were in the vanguard of the first waves of urbanisation. They are now the destination for another mass movement of people. So far so good. It's how they've historically grown and prospered. This time things are different. Attitudes and assumptions are being challenged. The essence of what it is to be a citizen is being fought for, intellectually and physically.    

 

I’ll say up front my pictures aren’t documentary in terms of taking a journalistic approach. These are more personal which I appreciate can be a euphemism for self-referential shoe-gazing. As if.

My angle on this story is an appreciation in some way of what it is to be a child of Irish immigrants. Granted with the privilege of blending in but still with an appreciation of what it is to be an outsider. 

There’s no set plan or timetable yet. I’ll share work in progress here. I’m also interested in other forms of presenting it. I’m not rejecting books by default but hey it’s 2017 and other ways and means are possible. 

Wish me luck.

things fall apart

Caption. Just a few words about the picture please. How hard can it be? Yet my love of photography - and street in particular - is that its meaning is open to the eye of the beholder. No nudges or hints necessary. Just breathe in and breathe out. Simple.

Perhaps it's my Irish roots but this year had a particular significance even before it began and the last 11 months have compounded that dramatically. I was looking back at my work over the summer, at two images in particular. Ordinarily they'd be filed as candidates for the next part of the journey but bringing them together is as close as I ever have to making a statement, however oblique, about my take on the images.

What's that you say? Where's the caption? 

Let's make it a quote from W.B. Yeats. 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

End of sermon.

Evelyn Hofer, a great photographer

I was fortunate over the holidays to drop in to my favourite second hand book shop. A while back I came across an original catalogue for the Family of Man exhibition so I always cross its threshold with a lovely sense of possibility, often dissipated. On this occasion however I found real treasure. Not a great rarity but a book whose cover had really made an impression on me when I saw it first time around, a monograph of Evelyn Hofer. 

With the luxury of looking at it at home and not furtively in a shop I was really absorbed by her images of Dublin in the sixties. A place and time with resonance in my own life. Despite appearances to the contrary I do enjoy colour photography. The particular light evoked in those images so integral to their representation of time and place I can only stand and stare. The portraits anonymous, for the most part, but complicit. Subjects soulful.

Girl with Bicycle, Dublin 1966, Evelyn Hofer

Her work is so wonderful and so largely unknown that, not for the first time, I wonder how quickly we rush to form a view on the Canon of Great Photographers. It's human nature of course. We all need our Top Ten songs, film stars...paint names [no? maybe that's just me].

There's the occasional Vivian Maier to upset the status quo but there is so much great work to discover and enjoy. Not every photograph that can be taken has been taken! Or at least found.

In the meantime I'll keep riffling through the shelves of pre-loved books, open for persuasion.

maybe it's because I'm a Londoner

One interesting response I had to my pictures at the London Street Photography show was a request for an interview for The Irish World. Nothing came of it...except it's lead me to reflect on my status as second generation Irish and what, if any, influence it's had on my work. Don't worry, this isn't turning into a misery memoire. Normal service will be resumed!

My first thoughts are around some kind of identity of belonging, Where's home?

I think I'm a classic immigrant child, caught between parental and host country's nationalities. The twist is the particular historic relationship between Ireland and England. Looking at my own upbringing and others I know of immigrant descent there's broadly two experiences. One a deliberate celebration of difference: a public life built around extended family and other immigrants; close affiliation to the social networks of religion, culture etc. The other experience of assimilation, keeping your head down, adopting not so much a pro-active Englishness, whatever that is, but a dilution of the ways of the old country.

My parents certainly had many friends from their old country. They'd met in the Irish dance halls of South London in the 50s and both worked in professions, nursing and engineering, with substantial reservoirs of Irish blood and sweat. However my life was relatively insulated from that world, I think, as a consequence of two conflicting ambitions of my parents. My father's dream to never settle here because in his mind he was always going to return home, and my mother's determination, as much out of necessity as desire, to make the best of life in the here and now, in England. The result was an in-between state of mind where England was not good enough for me, nor I for it.

So if I'm neither Irish nor English, then how about 'British', tribe of choice for many second generation sons and daughters? Well I'm afraid that resonated too strongly with the phrase 'Brits Out' painted onto the walls of my 70s childhood memories of family holidays in the north of Ireland. Consequently the only real place that I felt was mine to show allegiance to, and feel comfortable being associated with, was London. It felt big enough, old enough, strong enough...yet still undefined. Think of a Londoner and you're as likely to come up with Del Boy Trotter as you are Dick Whittington, Charlie Chaplin as much as Charles Dickens. Unusually for a label, 'Londoner' felt liberating not restraining.



Today under my flag of convenience I stride my domain not as a king, more like a thief. London doesn't owe me anything. Unlike the Duke of Westminster I don't own the place. Everyone on the street is a Londoner, for one day at least. I'm just like them. Just visiting.

Thanks to these reflections, the in-betweeness of my upbringing, my subsequent choice of London as a safe haven, I now see a source of my particular take on the fluid and fragile nature of city life. The photographer as outsider is a well worn image but it's fascinating to consider in relation to street photography. Does the work of a native Chicagoan, Roman or Mumbaikar have any greater authenticity than the visitor? One for a future post I think!

Auerbach's building sites, the mountains of London

The current Frank Auerbach show at The Courtauld Gallery, London Building Sites 1952-1962, portrays a London literally rebuilding itself post-war. The series of paintings depict building sites around central London including John Lewis in Oxford Street, the Shell building at the South Bank and the Empire Cinema, Leicester Square.

 

Rebuilding the Empire Cinema, Leicester Square, 1962, Frank Auerbach

I was fascinated by the exhibition's title, an exception to my received impression of the usual ones there e.g. Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence: The Courtauld Wedding Chests. Portraying the primal scene of the birth of buildings, that point where the ground is literally broken, in thick, viscous oil paint in such a traditional gallery was a contrast I liked.

Granted the location of these buildings was influential and reminded me, in my own lifetime, of the appearance and disappearance of buildings, streets even: "a heaving, bubbling, cauldron" as Auerbach said.

He characterises London in this post war period in a wonderfully evocative phrase "...(it) was a marvellous landscape with precipice and mountains and crags, full of drama" and this series is on first look more representative of Mars than Earth, let alone London. Red, ochre and umber saturate the paintings' surfaces. It's a primal, alien experience yet a human element, although not immediately evident, is a definite presence. It takes me to my other interest in this portrayal of London at this particular point in its history which is more personal.

My father, as an immigrant from Ireland in the 1950s, represents the hidden hands behind so much of what shapes the architecture of modern London. Although not directly involved in the building sites represented here, his compatriots were. Looking at these paintings, at the occasional glimpse of a silhouette, gave me a sense of connection to him and to the London he would have experienced. Another quote from Auerbach: "...(there was a) sense of survivors scurrying among a ruined city… and a sort of curious freedom… I remember a feeling of camaraderie among the people in the street”.

It also made me reflect on the current renewal of the centre of London courtesy of the Crossrail project. I'd like to think there's an artist working now in the same vein, recording the birth of another landmark in the depths of the mountains and crags of Charing Cross Road.