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Tim Robinson’s Connemara: TG4 on 10|06|2020

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on June 3, 2020 – 5:32 pm
Filed under Ethnography, Film
Tim Robinson’s Connemara with a “Connemara stone” from Ballyheigue Beach.

Things happen in threes, so they say.

Cathy Galvin, a poet and journalist whose family emigrated from Mason’s Island in Connemara, contacted me about Charles R. Browne’s ethnographic study of Carna. Cathy also sent me an essay by Kevin T. James on the meaning of “emptiness” in Connemara.

James built his essay around an entry in the visitors’ book of Mongan’s Hotel, the pub/shop/hotel operated by Martin Mongan in Carna in the 1890s. Mongan is an intriguing character and, as usual, I consulted Tim Robinson on Mongan, Mason’s Island, and the tricky issue of the emptiness of Connemara.

I had just begun re-reading Robinson’s Connemara: listening to the wind (first published in 2006) when I went for a walk on Ballyheigue Beach and found several “Connemara Stones” in the intertidal zone, a favourite haunt of Tim Robinson’s. “Connemara Stones” are erratics, granite rocks that were picked up by a glacier in Connemara and carried south until the ice melted and dropped the stones at various sites in Kerry (see the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 119, 2 (2008): 137-152).

Synchronicity or what?

Tim Robinson 1935-2020 (Photograph: Nicolas Fève).

Then, TG4 announced the screening on Weds June 10, 2020 of a new film that it is broadcasting in memory of Tim Robinson and his wife and longtime collaborator Mairéad Robinson. The film explores the Robinsons’ topographical study of Connemara over thirty years.

Tim Robinson’s Connemara: listening to the wind is an intriguing book that has at its core an environmentalist’s awareness of the tension between emptiness and settlement over several centuries of social, political, and cultural disruption, a theme that he developed in a series of walks through the landscape.

It will be interesting to see what that looks like on film.

Appalling vistas: TG4 broadcasts series on social documentary photography in Ireland in the 1890s

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on October 24, 2015 – 3:37 pm
Filed under Curatorial Projects, Journalism, Photography, Research

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About 10 years go I came across this photograph. The caption suggests that it was taken during the Famine of 1845-9 in Ireland.  It wasn’t. True, it is very similar to the scenes recorded in cabins throughout the west of Ireland and graphic illustrations of such scenes were published in illustrated newspapers at the time. There is no record, however, of any photograph of people dying of starvation in the 1845-9 famine.  Indeed a photograph like this would have been impossible in the early stages of photography – invented less than a decade before the famine. As a result he photograph has been dismissed by some people as a fake, the harsh pool of light suggesting a studio staging.

I set out to look for the original and test its authenticity. I never found it, but I found the next best thing – the original document in which the photograph was first published.  The photograph is entitled ‘A Sick Family Carraroe’ and is one of 18 photographs that were published in a pamphlet entitled  ‘Relief of Distress in the West and South of Ireland, 1898.’ The photographs were taken in April during an inspection of conditions in Connemara by Thomas L. Esmonde, Inspector of the Manchester Committee. He was reacting to reports of famine in Connemara, what locals call the Second Famine or Gorta Beag. He inspected a dozen houses in which he found people lying on the floor, covered with rags and old sacks and barely able to move from a combination of influenza and hunger.

The search for the photograph became the basis of an idea for a TV series on social documentary photography or, to put it another way, a social history of documentary photography in Ireland in the 19th century. I pitched the idea to a producer and a broadcaster in 2011 and funding was eventually secured from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland in 2014 for a six part series based on my research. TG4 will begin  broadcasting Trid an Lionsa or ‘Through the Lens’ tomorrow Sunday 25 October 2015.

I haven’t been involved in in the production itself, just the research into historical social documentary photography and the people who work in this area. This material has been “translated into television” by Cathal Watters (Oíche na Gaoithe Móire) and follows the TG4 controversial format of presenter driven, on-the-road info-tainment. (http://wp.me/p56Bmf-5g).

I have no idea what to expect. Like a colleague I will be watching from behind the couch … hoping!  It’ll be interesting to see how the balance between a social history of documentary photography and ‘factual’ entertainment works out. I know some key “voices” were excluded but that is the unenviable task of a producer. Either way it promises be an intriguing televisual event and, at the very least, it should create an awareness of the rich resource that exists in photographic archives and collections around the country.

 

For more images / Comment see: Ballymaclinton, The Town that Time Forgot

 

 

Ciarán Walsh hangs Lamb on Inis Oírr: Charles Lamb exhibition opens in Áras Éanna, Aran.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on August 29, 2013 – 7:02 pm
Filed under art, Exhibition, Heritage

Laillí and Mary Lamb (right of picture) at the opening of a selection of paintings by their father Charles Lambe (1893–1964) in Aras Éanna, Inis Oirr, the Aran Islands on 2 August 2013. The exhibition was hung by Ciarán Walsh of www.curator.ie. The photographs shows a section of the audience that includes the Samb sisters.

 

 

Laillí Lamb de Buitléar and Mary Lamb Waugh (right of picture) at the opening of an exhibition (2 August 2013) of paintings by their father Charles Lamb (1893–1964) in Aras Éanna, Inis Oirr, the Aran Islands.

 

There was a big turn out for the opening of an exhibition of paintings by Charles Lamb (1893–1964) in Aras Éanna, the arts centre on Inis Oírr in the Aran Islands. Lamb was from Northern Ireland. He was born in County Armagh and attended evening classes at the Belfast School of Art before he gained a scholarship to the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin where he studied from 1917 to 21. Like so many Irish painters of the time, Lamb was attracted to the West of Ireland where he focused on studies of peasant life in Conomara. He painted on the Aran Islands in 1928 and he settled in An Ceathrú Rua (Carraroe), where he the built a house in the Breton style in the he mid-1930s.

 

currachs

Ag Iompar na gCurraí / Carrying a Currach by Charles Lamb (1893–1964).

 

The paintings are part of a private collection that is owned by Laillí Lamb de Buitléar and the exhibition was curated by the contemporary glass artist Róisín de Buitléar. It was hung by Ciarán Walsh of www.curator.ie. The exhibition is the highlight of an arts programme, devised by Maighread Ní Ghallchóir and Danny Kirrane in Aras Éanna, that is dedicated to the memory of Laillí’s husband Eamon de Buitléar – the writer, musician and film maker who died in January 2013.

 

10 photographs portraying the opening of the Charles Lamb exhibition in Áras Éanna on Inis Oírr, the Aran Islands. The photographs feature Lally and Mary Lamb, daughters of the artist; Ciarán Walsh of curator.ie who hung the show; Mairead Ní Ghallcóir and Danny Kirrane of Áras Éanna.

Opening of Charles Lamb Exhibition in Áras Éanna on Inis Oírr, the Aran Islands.

 

 

 

A Tribute to Paddy ‘Red’ Lydon, The Boy In The Postcard, The Irish Independent 13.04.2013

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on April 16, 2013 – 4:22 pm
Filed under Criticism, Heritage, Journalism

This image is a jpeg of an article written by Ciarán Walsh and published in the Irish Independent on Saturday 13 April, 2013.The article marks the passing of Paddy 'Red' Lydon, the young boy who featured in the iconic 1962 postcard entitled 'Collecting turf from the bog, Connemara,' published by John Hinde and Company. The piece is a commentary on the iconic status of 'Collecting the Turf, Conomara' and placing it in the context of Hinde's publishing career and the history of postcards generally. Ciarán Walsh is director of www.curator.ie, an independent curatorial practice that manages arts, heritage and media projects. www.curator.ie incorporates EYEBALL publishing which specialises in web orientated media projects. He is based in Ballyheigue, Co. Kerry, in the south west of Ireland.

 

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An Island Funeral, Inishbofin, 16 July 2023.



TCD to announce return of ancestral remains to Inishbofin



Blogging resumes on Ballymaclinton: An Irish giant, 24 stolen skulls, one colonial legacies project and a slave owner named Berkeley.



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