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curator.ie begins work on the Ann Doherty collection in Donegal County Archives Service

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on July 6, 2022 – 1:08 pm

Ciarán Walsh begins work on the Ann Doherty Collection in Donegal County Archives Service. Photo: Niamh Brennan, Archivist at Donegal County Council.

Donegal County Council Archives Service acquired a collection of photographs by Ann Doherty in 2018. Doherty worked as a photojournalist with the Sunday Times Magazine between 1998 and 2005 and documented ordinary people living in extraordinary situations across the world. She documented poverty in Blair’s Britain and travelled through post-communist Caucasus countries, Ukraine, and the Balkans. She also worked in Jordan, Egypt, and Sierra Leone. Doherty grew up in England, but her grandmother lived on Gola Island, a small island off the coast of Donegal. This was the subject of her first commission and it remained a major influence on her work as a social documentary photographer.

The Heritage Council awarded Donegal County Archives Service a Heritage Stewardship grant to employ an archivist / curator to work with County Archivist Niamh Brennan and catalogue, digitise, and prepare the collection for exhibition in partnership with Caroline Carr and Judith McCarthy in the County Museum. Ciarán Walsh began work on the project in July, working alongside Niamh Brennan and Ann Doherty on the selection and digitising of 75 images for exhibition. The second phase of the project got underway in August and an exhibition of Doherty’s photographs titled A Common Humanity is scheduled to open in Donegal County Museum in Letterkenny on September 22.

Caroline Carr, Donegal County Museum, Ann Doherty, photographer, and Ciaran Walsh, archivist / curator.

Research Update | October 2018

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on October 3, 2018 – 1:59 pm

Filed under Anthropology, Research

Reading Haddon …

Four years ago, I was given the job of finding out what exactly was going on in the Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory, which was established in TCD in 1891. My research has focussed on the Laboratory’s programme of ethnographic surveys in the west of Ireland, which were conducted by “head-hunters” Alfred Cort Haddon and Charles R. Browne between 1892 and 1900.

The main question is this: what do the surveys tell us about the development of (1) social documentary photography in Ireland and (2) a western imaginary based on island life in the west of Ireland? My research also considers the ethical and practical implications of placing material from the laboratory–including anatomical specimens–into the public domain, especially in the context of debates about the relation between body, image, and identity in contemporary Ireland.

BBC Northern Ireland on location in “Old” Anatomy TCD in 2018. Brendan Holland and Martina Hennessy, TCD School of Medicine, discuss the relevance of historic anatomical/anthropological specimens to current medical research (see the Giant Gene)

Four years on the project is entering its final phase. The tricky task of converting extensive work on primary sources in Dublin and Cambridge is well underway and slowly taking shape as a text. This text is structured around the idea of murderous, little facts from the hidden spaces of anthropology in Ireland. These facts have produced some interesting results; not least the need for some radical new thinking about the history of anthropology as a whole.

Ugly Little Facts: Aidan Baker, Librarian of the Haddon Library in Cambridge, with a collection of papers relating to the Aran Islands. The documents were placed in an envelope in 1913 and “lost.” They were rediscovered in 2013 in a search for Haddon’s notes and/or other papers relating to “The Ethnography of the Aran Islands, County Galway” (Haddon & Browne 1893).

Murderous Little Facts

The origin of this trope–ugly little facts–comes from an unlikely source. Thomas Henry Huxley is credited with coining the phrase in a conversation recalled by Francis Galton in his memoirs (1908). Herbert Spencer revealed in conversation that he once wrote a tragedy. Huxley declared that the ‘catastrophe had to be a ‘beautiful theory killed by a nasty ugly little fact.’

My theory–or historiographical framework perhaps–is that the disciplinary history of anthropology operates around a foundational trope. Haddon is represented as taking anthropology out of the armchair and into the field in 1898; after he had escaped from the Darwinian backwater that was Dublin in the 1890s. That claim is not supported by facts in the Haddon papers and related sources but, repeated often enough, it has become a form of disciplinary folklore that has compressed the history of anthropology and circumscribed narratives like that of the Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory.

Reading Haddon: A small section of the Haddon Papers in Cambridge University Library.

The strategy I have adopted in response is to use overlooked primary sources as “tropocidal” facts; using ugly, little facts gleaned from the forgotten spaces of anthropology to kill off the armchair trope and suggest some alternative narratives. The Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory, in this scenario, becomes (1) the site of a struggle for disciplinary authority between conservative (biological) and radical (sociological) elements within “organised” anthropology in the 1890s, (2) an agent of the development of an equally radical, photo-ethnographic practice in fieldwork associated with the Laboratory and (3) the starting point for John Millington Synge’s exploration of peasant life in the West of Ireland.

Photography as ethnography: a photograph taken by Browne on the Great Blasket Island in 1897. The man in the middle is Tomás Ó Criomhtain, An tOileánach, one of the most celebrated figures of the Blasket Island Community and an important figure in folklore studies in Ireland. Photograph courtesy of the Board of TCD.

Forgotten Spaces

This study is grounded in the discovery of artefacts, records, and photographs associated with the Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory, which prompted a new reading of Haddon’s association with it. In 2014 Siobhán Ward of TCD started unpacking tea chests containing a substantial collection of historical material from the School of Anatomy. This material included specimens, instruments, records, paper and a spectacular collection of glass plate negatives dating from 1890. This material had ‘disappeared’ in 1948 when it was placed in long-term storage under the theatre in the “Old” Anatomy Building.

Reconstruction of the anthropological collection began in February 2016 and the contents of the tea chests have since been recorded, sorted, and tallied with related material in other collections in Ireland and UK. It wasn’t long before a gap opened up between the conventional history of pre-modern anthropology in Ireland and the ugly little facts —documentary and material— that had emerged from “Old” Anatomy.

“Unpacking” the Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory in 2016. An early photograph showing the anatomical and anthropological material discovered in the “Old” Anatomy building in 2014. The records of the Laboratory and associated artefacts are visible in the foreground. They include the schedules of measurements taken in the Aran Islands in 1892, Daniel J. Cunningham’s cast of the cranial topography of a chimpanzee, and some of the psychometric instruments designed by Francis Galton.

Finally …

“Unpacking” the Laboratory has become, unexpectedly, a confrontation with the historiography of anthropology. This has meant spending just over two years reading what Haddon wrote – rather than reading about what Haddon was thought to have done – and this has produced some interesting new narratives.

This part of the project will conclude in 2019 … hopefully.

Ciarán Walsh | Oct 3, 2018

The Skeleton of the Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on March 3, 2017 – 12:00 pm

Filed under Anthropology, Comment, Heritage, Research

A reproduction of the portrait of the Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath. The portrait was painted in Venice in 1757 by the Italian artist Pietro Longhi, when Magrath was 20 years of age. It shows Magrath being viewed by a group of Venetians in carnival bauta costumes, one of whom is wearing a mask called a larva. A man walks under Migrates outstretched arm.He is much taller than any one else in the room and, yet, Margate towers over him. Magarth died three years later and his body was sold to the School of Anatomy in Dublin University, Trinity College. It was dissected and the articulated skeleton remains as part of an historic collection of anatomy specimens, which is currently being curated by Ciarán Walsh of curator.ie.

Pietro Longhi, 1757, “True portrait of the Giant Cornelio Magrat the Irishman; he came to Venice in the year 1757; born 1st January 1737, he is 7 feet tall and weighs 420 pounds. Painted on commission from the Noble Gentleman Giovanni Grimani dei Servi, Patrician of Venice.” Museo di Rezzonico, Venice. Photograph: Osvaldo Böhm.

The Skeleton of The Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath is held by the School of Anatomy in Dublin University, Trinity College (TCD). It is the most famous item in a historic collection of anatomy specimens, records, and instruments that is held in the ‘Old’ Anatomy Building. The building was decommissioned in 2014 and the collection is being resolved as part of post-grad research programme managed jointly by the School of Medicine TCD, Maynooth University, Kimmage Development Studies Centre, and funded by the Irish Research Council (IRC).

I am employed as a full-time researcher on the project and resolving ethical issues relating to the retention of human remains is a major part of the work in hand. Indeed, the research proposal had to pass rigorous ethical approval procedures in Maynooth University, the School of Medicine TCD, and the IRC before I could get access to the ‘old’ Anatomy building and the collections held therein, which include the skeleton of Cornelius Magrath.

The skeleton is “in the news” following calls for Magrath’s remains to be buried. The controversy kicked off on the History Show on RTE Radio 1. It was picked up by chat show host Joe Duffy on Monday. Duffy argued that TCD should bury the skeleton of Cornelius Magrath because it was taken in a ‘body snatching’ raid on Magrath’s wake. Since then a debate of sorts has been taking place on the show.

The problem here is that there is no evidence that the body snatching story, however entertaining, is true. Magrath died on 16th May 1760 but the only contemporary account of his death was most likely written by either Robert Robinson, Professor of Anatomy in TCD, or Dr. George Cleghorn, the University anatomist. It is a rather enigmatic account, stating only that “Upon death, his body was carried to the Dissecting House.” (see Daniel J. Cunningham’s 1891 report to the Royal Irish Academy).

Magrath was dying of a wasting disease and it is clear from the Robinson/Cleghorn account that he was receiving medical attention at the time of his death. It records that Magrath’s “complexion was miserably pale and sallow; his pulses very quick at times for a man of his extraordinary height; and his legs were swollen.” Elsewhere, it states that his pulse beat almost sixty times a minutes “on his arrival here.” It sounds like Magrath was being cared for in the School of Medicine TCD when he died.

The body snatching legend has it that Magrath was being waked when medical students spiked the porter and made off with his body, which was immediately dissected in secret. Such a sensational body snatching could not have escaped notice and, furthermore, the dissection was both public knowledge and uncontroversial. Historians of anatomy in TCD have always believed that the body was paid for by Cleghorn and that the acquisition of the body was legitimate and ethical by the standards of the day. The problem here is that there is no documentary evidence of Magrath having consented to dissection or the permanent display of his skeleton.

That brings us to the contemporary issue of retention or burial. The report of the Working Group on Human Remains in Museum Collections (WGHR), published in the UK in 2003, acknowledged that human remains in collections “represent a unique and irreplaceable resource for the legitimate pursuance of scientific and other research” (p. 28) and concludes: “The Working Group feels that there is much merit in including museum collections of human remains within the regulatory structure proposed by the DH for health authorities and hospitals.” (p. 81).

Supervision by the Inspector of Anatomy of the ‘Old’ Anatomy collections in TCD covers the issue of regulation in Ireland in terms of the retention of Magrath’s skeleton as part of a historical scientific collection. This leaves the burial of Magrath’s remains at the discretion of the college authorities; which means that any decision will have to deal with public perception as to the “morality” of retaining identifiable human remains in collections of scientific material. That is deeply problematic, and Duffy’s attempt to frame the issue in body snatching folklore is distorting what should be a valuable and timely debate.

For more see: http://wp.me/p56Bmf-eP

Jane W. Shackleton: Pioneering Photographer and Unsung Hero of the Gaelic Revival

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on October 28, 2015 – 8:12 pm

Filed under Journalism, Photography, Research

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Jane W. Shackleton’s singular contribution to the Gaelic Revival has been seriously undervalued. Ciarán Walsh takes another look at the work of this pioneering photographer. In his latest post on the Ballymaclinton blog Walsh questions why Shackleton’s career as a pioneer of social documentary photography been seriously undervalued.

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

Fairscin Inise / An Island Portrait is a big hit in the Outer Hebrides.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on June 26, 2015 – 1:20 pm

Filed under Exhibition, Heritage, Photography

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Major research proposal endorsed by NUI Maynooth

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on August 9, 2014 – 4:37 pm

Filed under Anthropology, Education, Heritage, Research

Mark Maguire, Ciarán Walsh , Nicola Reynolds and Steve Coleman

Mark Maguire, Head of Anthropology NUI Maynooth, Ciarán Walsh , Nicola Reynolds, President of thr Anthropological Society NUIM and Steve Coleman, NUIM at the opening of the Headhunter exhibition in NUI Maynooth in October 2013.

A major research proposal prepared by Ciarán Walsh for the Irish Research Council’s (IRC) Employment Based Post-graduate Programme has been endorsed by the National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM) and now proceeds to the IRC for evaluation and adjudication. The proposal builds on the work that Walsh has been doing on the ‘Haddon in Ireland Project’ and involves a 4 year post-graduate research project supervised by Mark Maguire of NUIM in partnership with Abarta Audio Guides, a small heritage services company operated by Neil Jackman and Róisín Burke.

Neil Jackman of Abarta Audio Guides: http://abartaaudioguides.com/about-us

The ‘Haddon in Ireland’ research project brings together public research (NUI Maynooth), private sector innovation (Abarta Audio, Clonmel) and a researcher with a proven track record (Ciaran Walsh) to reopen and reexamine the history of human science in the British isles.

Anthropometry Inisbofin 6007

This project aims to explore the Irish Ethnographic Survey, an attempt to reveal the origins of the Irish ‘race’ undertaken by scientists from Ireland and the UK between 1891 and 1903. Among them was the famous AC Haddon. This was the beginning of ‘scientific’ Anthropology but it was overshadowed by subsequent developments in Cambridge. The records were ‘lost,’ dispersed over collections in Ireland and the UK where they have remained uncatalogued and largely overlooked for 120 years.

The primary aim to reconstruct that archive and place it in the public domain. The central question is how that can be achieved, given that the material is spread over a dozen institutions in 4 jurisdictions. We will look to the latest interactive technology for solutions.

We propose to create a transnational network that digitally links collections Dublin, Cambridge, London, Edinburgh and Belfast. We will develop interactive tools that will provide access to it and enhance the users experience of our anthropological heritage. The contemporary significance of this is enormous. The Survey’s attempts to trace the origins of the Irish people continues with the genetic study of populations.

This project will reconnect both and the transnational component will add enormously to the impact of the project on the public construction of Anthropological knowledge.

Ciarán Walsh returns to Inis Meáin with Chris Rodmell, photographer and film maker.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on August 9, 2014 – 4:05 pm

Filed under art, Photography, Research

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Ruairi and Chris meet after 40 years. Photo by Ciarán Walsh.

In June 2014 Chris Rodmell and Ciarán Walsh returned to Inis Meáin, the middle island of the Aran Islands, to meet some of the people Chris had filmed there in in 1973. Chris, a student in West Surrey College of Art and Design, had won an award of £250 from Thames Television to film life in an “enclosed community living on one of the remote islands off Ireland or Scotland.” He chose Inis Meáin. He spent three weeks on the island, filming with a 16mm Bolex and taking photographs with a medium format Mamiya on Kodak Ektachrome professional stock.

Info: https://www.curator.ie/inis-meain-1973-exhibition-photographs-chris-rodmell/

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Peadar Mór, Ciaran Walsh and Muirís Mac Chonaola on Inis Meáin. Photo by Chris Rodmell.

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Filming Peadar Mór at work weaving a basket. Photo by Chris Rodmell.

TV series on photography in Ireland developed by www.curator.ie & Sibéal Teo for TG4

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on July 3, 2014 – 3:35 pm

Filed under Comment, Film, Heritage, Journalism, Photography

Uploaded by www.curator.ie: a reproduction of a photograph of an impoverish family huddled in cabin in Connemara in 1898. It is entitled "A starving Irish family from Carraroe, County Galway." (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/sadlier/irish/starvati.htm) from an orig. It was traced to a pamphlet published by the Mansion House committee in 1898.

A starving Irish family from Carraroe, County Galway during the Famine . (Source: University of Virginia)

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. The reliance on off-the-cuff interviews rather than scripted narrative is a risky business in general Read Full Article. It suits some formats but I don’t know about a documentary on 19th century photography, with it’s intricate social, political and historical contexts and plots. I know some key “voices” were excluded but that is the unenviable task of a producer. Dropping a key commentator on the history of photography because, apparently, there were already enough English speakers is a bit odd though. 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 rewrites the history of anthropology at a conference organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute in the British Museum

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on July 2, 2014 – 4:40 pm

Filed under Anthropology, Heritage, Photography, Research

Jocelyne Dudding, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge and Ciarán Walsh of www.curator.ie in the foyer of the British Museum in London.

It’s a big claim, but papers presented by Jocelyne Dudding and Ciarán Walsh at the Anthropology and Photography conference in the British Museum (May 2014) have challenged the chronology of the early development of British anthropology and Haddon’s role in it.

Dudding and Walsh have been working on the ‘Haddon In Ireland’ project for the past 6 months, focussing on photographic and manuscript collections that are held in Cambridge – in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), the Haddon Library and the University Library.

They presented preliminary finding of their research at a conference organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute and the British Museum. The research, part funded by the Heritage Council of Ireland, is part of a project that is attempting to reconstruct the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey of 1891-1903.

The photographic record of the the Survey, the photograph albums of Charles R. Browne, were published by www.curator.ie in 2012 as part of the the ‘Irish Headhunter’ project. The albums are held in TCD but there was no trace of any paperwork that could place them in context. The search moved to Cambridge and significant work has been done in the photographic collections of the MAA and the Haddon Papers in the Haddon and University Libraries there.

Preliminary findings suggest that the Survey, established by Haddon and Cunningham in TCD in 1891, played a much greater role in Haddon’s transition from Zoology to Anthropology than had previously been thought. The photographic record, correspondence and journal entries reveal a lot about Haddon’s role in the survey with significant implications for the history of the early development of anthropology.

These are being teased as the ‘Haddon in Ireland’ project continues with the re-construction of the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey.

Tag Archives: Curator

curator.ie begins work on the Ann Doherty collection in Donegal County Archives Service

Research Update | October 2018

The Skeleton of the Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath.

Jane W. Shackleton: Pioneering Photographer and Unsung Hero of the Gaelic Revival

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

Fairscin Inise / An Island Portrait is a big hit in the Outer Hebrides.

Major research proposal endorsed by NUI Maynooth

Ciarán Walsh returns to Inis Meáin with Chris Rodmell, photographer and film maker.

TV series on photography in Ireland developed by www.curator.ie & Sibéal Teo for TG4

Ciarán Walsh rewrites the history of anthropology at a conference organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute in the British Museum

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