A photograph of the Great Blasket Island in the 1930s taken by Thomas H. Mason of Dublin. L-R: Domhnall Mharas Eoghan Bháin Ó Conchuir and Pádraig ‘Ceaist’ Ó Catháin.

The definitive exhibition of photographs of life on the Blasket islands opens in St. John’s Theatre in Listowel on Saturday 9 August 2014.

‘An Island Portrait’ has been developed by The Great Blasket Centre and www.curator.ie to accompany the publication by Collins Press of a book of photographs of the Blasket Island. The text was written by Micheál de Mórdha  (Director) and Dáithí de Mórdha (Archivist) and the photographs were edited by Ciarán Walsh of ww.curator.ie. The exhibition contains 50 photographs dating from 1892 onwards and it combines  classic ‘outsider’ views of the islanders and their way of life with photographs from family albums. The ethnographic look is counterbalanced by personal and, at times,  intimate glimpses of family life on the island.

Gearóid Cheaist Ó Catháin, the last child to live on the Great Blasket Island with Dáithí de Mórdha, The Great Blasket Centre,  in front of a photograph of Gearóid with his Grandfather Maurice Mhuiris Ó Catháin, taken by Dan MacMonagle after the Island was evacuated in 1953.