• publications
  • projects

Tag Archives: Photography

The Ann Doherty Collection goes on show

Comments Off on The Ann Doherty Collection goes on show
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on September 29, 2022 – 7:32 am
Filed under Archive Projects, Curatorial Projects, Photography

The Ann Doherty Collection is an archive of photographic material, typescripts, and print journalism generated by Ann Doherty while working as a social-documentary photographer and photojournalist between 1997 and 2005. Donegal County Council Archives Service acquired her collection in 2018 and, with the assistance of the Heritage Council, employed Ciarán | curator.ie to catalogue the entire collection and digitise 100 images for exhibition in the County Museum. “A Common Humanity: Full Circle” opened in Letterkenny on September 22, 2022 in preparation for Culture Night.

Ann Doherty | A Common Humanity

Comments Off on Ann Doherty | A Common Humanity
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on August 24, 2022 – 1:56 pm
Filed under Archival/Curation Projects, Photography

The first phase of the Ann Doherty Project is complete.

Working with County Archivist Niamh Brennan, Ciarán Walsh and Ann Doherty selected and digitised 75 images from the Ann Doherty Collection. The focus now moves to the County Museum where Caroline Carr and Judith McCarthy are putting the exhibition together. The exhibition is titled A Common Humanity and is scheduled to open on September 22, 2022.

Meanwhile, work begins on cataloguing the collection and putting it in online alongside other collections in the archives.

“Old” Anatomy goes live for Science Week 2018

Comments Off on “Old” Anatomy goes live for Science Week 2018
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on November 13, 2018 – 11:14 am
Filed under Anthropology, Comment, Education, Research, Science Week

 

 

Going Wilde in “Old” Anatomy. William Wilde’s collection of skulls goes on display in TCD as a backdrop for the filming of “Growing, Up Live”

 

The skulls have been taken out of storage and put on display as the “Old” Anatomy Museum in TCD goes “live” for three nights during  Science Week 2018. The Museum has been  transformed into a studio for  Growing Up, Live. It is being filmed in front of a live studio audience and the programme makers will “be treating the audience to live science experiments every night”  which, RTE promises, “will unlock our understanding of a human lifetime.’

The Anatomy Museum is a really interesting setting for a show like this. Historically, dissections were done in front of a live audience. That won’t happen in “Growing Up, Live” but the audience will be surrounded by the results of 300 years of anatomical research. The Museum is  home to a collection of anatomical and medical specimens that was built up over 300 years of medical education in Trinity College, University of Dublin,  much of  which was “re-discovered” when “Old” Anatomy Dept was decommissioned in 2014 and the School of Medicine move to the TBSI building on Pearse St.

 

Angela Scanlon adopts the traditional pose of the Anatomist – skull in hand – in “Old” Anatomy in preparation for the filming of “Growing Up, Live.”

 

 

The live broadcast marks a turning point in the process of opening the least known and most interesting museum in Dublin to the public.  In March 2017, Joe Duffy created some controversy when he called for the skeleton of Cornelius Magrath, the Irish Giant, to be removed from display in the mistaken belief the Magrath’s body had been robbed, dissected in secret, and his skeleton put on display in 1760. I was working on the collection at the time and found evidence that Magrath had in fact been in the care of Trinity School of Medicine when he died.

The controversy died but there was a some nervousness about opening the collections to the public as a result. Brendan Holland, another Irish Giant, came to the rescue. He filmed part of the documentary “The Giant Gene”  in the Anatomy Museum and went public on the most difficult question of all: as a giant, how would he feel it his skeleton was put on display? Brendan didn’t have a problem with that, given the contribution that historic specimens like Magrath continue to make to medical research into conditions like gigantism.

 

 

2018. Public engagement at work: BBC Northern Ireland recording an interview between Brendan Holland and Martina Hennessy (School of Medicine TCD) for the a documentary entitled “The Giant Gene.” It was produced by Chris Nikkel and broadcast in June 2018.

 

2016. The Anatomy Museum operating as a mixture of conservation workshop and anthropological “field.” This is some of the material that was discovered in 2014 and needed to be sorted, catalogued, and stored in preparation for conservation and display. The anthropological material is visible in the foreground.

 

The use of the space as a studio marks another turning point. An enormous amount of material was discovered in the process of decommissioning the “Old” Anatomy Dept in 2014. Much of this was in tea-chests and crates but there was a lot of material stored under the old theatre and in every nook and cranny of the building.  This included a really important collection of photographs taken in the Aran Islands in 1890, shortly before the Anatomy Dept established a small Anthropology Dept and opened an anthropometric (the measurement of humans) laboratory.

 

A photograph taken by Andrew F. Dixon and Alfred Cort Haddon in Dún Chonnchubhair, Inis Meáin, in 1890. The negative on the left still has the  masking that was used to create the effect of a clear sky. The image on the right is an inverted scan of the original, which is called a positive.

 

That is where curator.ie got involved. I received funding from the Irish Research Council (research.ie)  to work on collections associated with the Anthropometric Laboratory and its programme of ethnographic surveys in the west of Ireland. The project was a joint venture of Maynooth University, TCD School of Medicine, and Kimmage Development Studies Centre, now Shanahan Research Centre.

As a curator and  a student of anthropology,  I did my fieldwork in “Old” Anatomy.  Most of the material discovered in 2014 was stored in the Anatomy Museum and it took the best part of two years to go through it and organise suitable storage in the nooks and crannies from whence it came. The plan, all along, was to restore the museum as a public space.

The filming of “The Giant Gene” was a key part of a strategy to make the collection visible and to engage the public in a conversation about the contemporary significance of “Old” Anatomy, whether that is the Skeleton of Magrath, the huge range of medical education material, or the ethnographic material associated with the Anthropological Dept.

The filming of “Growing Up, Live” is on a different scale altogether, given the reach of Science Week and the presence in the museum of a studio audience. RTE publicists have described the “studio” as an amazing Anatomy Museum”  and it will be very interesting to see how the audience engages with the various collections.

 

This is the space to watch during Science Week.

 

 

The history of the British Isles as represented in skulls. Ethnologists in the mid-nineteenth century believed that they could find traces of the various invasions of Ireland by comparing the shape of ancient skulls.

 

 

To Follow: The Skull Measuring Business: the work of the Dublin Anthropometric Anthropometric Laboratory (1891-1903).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research Update | October 2018

Comments Off on Research Update | October 2018
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

 

 

 

 

 

Knock: Apparition Or Slide Show

Comments Off on Knock: Apparition Or Slide Show
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on August 22, 2018 – 10:52 pm
Filed under Comment, Photography, Politics, Research

 

 

A man of Vision: Fr Bartholomew Cavanagh ( 1821-1897), Parish Priest of Knock and Aughamore in 1879. This is man who may have engineered an apparition using a magic lantern. The site of the “apparition” is visible in the background. Photo: Knock Shrine.

 

The latest post on the curator.ie blog examines new evidence supporting the claim that the apparition said to have occurred in Knock in 1879 was in fact a slide show engineered by the parish priest (pictured above).

It  builds on research into the Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory, drawing on an investigation of the role played by James Hack Tuke in the organisation of a survey of fishing Grounds in the West of Ireland in 1890. This survey laid the foundation for the programme of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken by the Laboratory in one of Tuke’s main areas of operation, Mayo and Connemara.

 

Sketch showing distribution of relief tickets in the turf market in Westport. From Illustrated London News, March 6th, 1880. Source Mayo Library.

 

Tuke visited Knock in 1880, 6 months after the apparition occurred and 6 weeks or so after the first report was published in the press. Tuke claimed that the “apparition” involved the use of a lantern projector to “depict” the Blessed Virgin as in a “vision.” This connected with a conversation I had some time ago with Stan Mason, grandson of Thomas Mason, the man who recalled providing the parish priest in Knock with a lantern projector around the time of the apparition. It seemed obvious to me that Knock was more slide show than apparition.

The announcement that the Pope was going to Knock as part of his visit to Ireland (2018) prompted a review of the literature on the apparition of 1879. The findings are posted on Ballymaclinton, which is sort of appropriate given that the blog was inspired by a fictional village that was created as a showcase for the “Real” Irish during the Franco-Brititish exhibition in London in 1908.

The most surprising finding is that church authorities were sceptical of reports of an apparition and commissioned Francis Lennon, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Law in Maynooth, to investigate the possibility that a lantern projector was used. He concluded that the “apparition”was created using some form of optical device but he was overruled. John MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, decided that the witness statements were trustworthy and set about establishing Knock as a site of Marian apparition and pilgrimage. The story was published in the Tuam News in January 1880.

 

A lantern projector in action. Source: Martyn Jolly.

 

So, the question has to be asked: If the apparition was a slide show, as the evidence suggests, why is Pope Francis visiting Knock? Maybe it is a case of history repeating itself and maybe it is a case of the optics of pilgrimage. For more go to Ballymaclinton.

 

 

Ciarán Walsh

 

 

 

 

 

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

Comments Off on Jane W. Shackleton: Pioneering Photographer and Unsung Hero of the Gaelic Revival
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on October 28, 2015 – 8:12 pm
Filed under Journalism, Photography, Research

Mullins 600dpiКупля-продажа товаров

 

 

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

Comments Off on Appalling vistas: TG4 broadcasts series on social documentary photography in Ireland in the 1890s
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on October 24, 2015 – 3:37 pm
Filed under Curatorial Projects, Journalism, Photography, Research

 mensclub24

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 elected fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Comments Off on Ciarán Walsh elected fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on August 4, 2015 – 1:28 pm
Filed under Anthropology, Education, Research

Logo of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, posted by Ciarán Walsh of www.curator.ie

 

Ciarán Walsh has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. This follows his pioneering work on the Irish Ethnographic Survey and the impact this had on the early development of anthropology in Ireland and the UK. Walsh first presented this material at a conference on anthropology and photography in the British Museum in 2014. In 2015 he presented an update on his research as part of  the Fellows seminar series in the Institute in London, along with his research partner Dr. Jocelyne Dudding of Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (CUMAA). He will present a further paper on the connection between the Irish Ethnographic Survey and the institutional development of the RAI at a conference in December 2015. This will be based on new work that has been done as part of his postgraduate research in Maynooth University (Anthropology).

 

RAI Research Seminar: Walsh & Dudding, RAI RESEARCH SEMINAR SEMINAR SERIES AT THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE Haddon in Ireland, reconstructing the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey Ciarán Walsh, Maynooth University Dr Joe Dudding, Arch and Anth Museum, Cambridge Wednesday 8 April at 5.30 pm This illustrated talk outlines a project to reconstruct the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey that was established by Haddon in 1891 under the umbrella of the British Ethnographic Survey. The Irish Survey was overshadowed by subsequent developments in Cambridge / Torres but, unlike the British Survey, it was active 'in the field' for almost a decade. The records of the Survey were dispersed over collections in Ireland and the UK where they have remained uncatalogued and largely overlooked for 120 years. Recent research has however, uncovered manuscripts, photographs and artifacts (the contents of Haddon's Anthropometric Laboratory in Dublin for instance) that have the capacity to change our understanding of the early development of Anthropology in Ireland and the UK. More work needs to be done and the role played by the RAI in particular in the establishment by Haddon of the Survey and the Laboratory in Dublin needs to be examined. This event is free, but tickets must be booked. To book tickets please go to http://walshdudding.eventbrite.co.uk Location : Royal Anthropological Institute, London

Jocelyne Dudding (Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) and Ciarán Walsh (Curator.ie and Maynooth University) .

 

 

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

Comments Off on Fairscin Inise / An Island Portrait is a big hit in the Outer Hebrides.
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on June 26, 2015 – 1:20 pm
Filed under Exhibition, Heritage, Photography

 ceoec.ru

 

 

Royal Anthropological Institute Research Seminar: Walsh & Dudding

Comments Off on Royal Anthropological Institute Research Seminar: Walsh & Dudding
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on April 8, 2015 – 11:35 am
Filed under Anthropology, Heritage, Research

RAI Research Seminar: Walsh & Dudding, RAI RESEARCH SEMINAR  SEMINAR SERIES AT THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE  Haddon in Ireland, reconstructing the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey  Ciarán Walsh, Maynooth University Dr Joe Dudding, Arch and Anth Museum, Cambridge  Wednesday 8 April at 5.30 pm  This illustrated talk outlines a project to reconstruct the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey that was established by Haddon in 1891 under the umbrella of the British Ethnographic Survey. The Irish Survey was overshadowed by subsequent developments in Cambridge / Torres but, unlike the British Survey, it was active 'in the field' for almost a decade. The records of the Survey were dispersed over collections in Ireland and the UK where they have remained uncatalogued and largely overlooked for 120 years. Recent research has however, uncovered manuscripts, photographs and artifacts (the contents of Haddon's Anthropometric Laboratory in Dublin for instance) that have the capacity to change our understanding of the early development of Anthropology in Ireland and the UK. More work needs to be done and the role played by the RAI in particular in the establishment by Haddon of the Survey and the Laboratory in Dublin needs to be examined.  This event is free, but tickets must be booked. To book tickets please go to http://walshdudding.eventbrite.co.uk  Location : Royal Anthropological Institute, London

Jocelyne Dudding (Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) and Ciarán Walsh (Curator.ie and Maynooth University) .

RAI RESEARCH SEMINAR

SEMINAR SERIES AT THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

Haddon in Ireland:

reconstructing the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey

Ciarán Walsh, Curator.ie and Maynooth University
Dr Joe Dudding, Arch and Anth Museum, Cambridge

Wednesday 8 April at 5.30 pm

This illustrated talk outlines a project to reconstruct the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey that was established by Haddon in 1891 under the umbrella of the British Ethnographic Survey. The Irish Survey was overshadowed by subsequent developments in Cambridge / Torres but, unlike the British Survey, it was active ‘in the field’ for almost a decade. The records of the Survey were dispersed over collections in Ireland and the UK where they have remained uncatalogued and largely overlooked for 120 years. Recent research has however, uncovered manuscripts, photographs and artifacts (the contents of Haddon’s Anthropometric Laboratory in Dublin for instance) that have the capacity to change our understanding of the early development of Anthropology in Ireland and the UK. More work needs to be done and the role played by the RAI in particular in the establishment by Haddon of the Survey and the Laboratory in Dublin needs to be examined.

Information: http://walshdudding.eventbrite.co.uk

Location : Royal Anthropological Institute
50 Fitzroy Street
London
W1T 5BT
United Kingdom
« Older posts
  •  

     

    HOME

     

    Anthropo lab 2016 P1180364 600 dpi

     

     

  • News

    • 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.
    • Is the TCD statement on the stolen skulls of Inishbofin a missed opportunity?
    • Inishbofin Islanders demand repatriation of remains held in TCD
  •  

     

    COMMENT | BLOG

     

    ballymac-banner1 400

  • ABOUT

     

    ciaran ambrotype2IMG_0001

     

     

  • CONTACT

     

    curator.ie@gmail.com

     

    +353872370846

     

    Booleenshare

    Ballyheigue

    Tralee

    Co Kerry

    Ireland

     

     




Latest News



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.



www.curator.ie || Booleenshare, Co. Kerry, Ireland || web design by Kerrynet Solutions