William Fagan’s article on the history of photography in Ireland created a great deal of interest among Macfilos readers. On Tuesday, in a Zoom presentation, William gave a 45-minute talk on the same subject, with many more illustrations and information. Here is and I recommend sitting down with a cup of coffee for an entertaining trip back to the early days of Irish photography.
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Thanks Jorg-Peter. Old photographs record our countries as they were, histories describe our countries as they were, so the two do the same thing, but in different ways. I have taken to using the term ‘visual history’ when talking about old photography.
My talk was the first in a series called ‘In Our Own Image’. The remaining talks will involve historians and academics doing ‘deep dives’ on some of the topics which I covered and others as well. I might at some stage do another one on how photographic technology has changed over 180+ years and how it has changed the way that we photograph and what we photograph. I touched on this a bit last week’s talk.
William
Dear William,
I was lucky to attend live (from my holiday destination in France), and I can only agree that this was a both fascinatingly precise and throughly entertaining lesson. I liked most the way you connected history of photography to general history. This shows how important photography is as a medium for documentation (and propaganda). Thank you very, very much, and I hope to hear another talk from you at some point in the future.
Jörg-Peter
A wonderful video. I greatly enjoyed the parallel between history and photography. I will have to dig into Irish photographers to know them better. As for John Hynde I remember his postcards were the only ones you could find in the west of Scotland in the early 1980s. Thanks very much William for the post and I will look forward to more videos
Jean
Thanks Jean. Yes, John Hinde’s cards could be found in many countries. They were a product of their era and probably would not be acceptable today, as we just send messages on smartphones instead of cards.
I hope you were able to find some Father Browne material on the link which David Davison posted. I just kept myself to the Titanic photo because of the story, but, as you know, he was a prolific photographer for many years. A lovely book was published last year called ‘Wandering Wicklow with Father Browne’. There is a photo from 1910 of Dargle Glen in the book (also on the cover) which is one for the ages. If someone like Constable had painted that image the art critics would be raving about it.
William
I just talked to a friend I worked with who is involved with Irish societies here in my County, Oneida, and irish festival in Herkimer county and passed this on for the cultural center here in Oneida county. Hope it helps get the ball rolling, and one other suggestion, but I don’t know anyone there, is the Eastman group museum KODAK founder Rochester NY!
Thanks John, that is a start. We have other contacts from the Photo Album of the Irish, a book which we published a couple of years ago. The book features Irish American families. We have done another book recently with Irish Canadian families.
William
Boy I hope you share this with the many photographic museums and Irish societies thru out the world! What a LABOR OF LOVE !
Thanks John. A labour of love, indeed. That is a good idea. I have started with photographers and photographic societies and some of our Australian colleagues here have enjoyed the talk already. Irish societies are well organised around the world, particularly in North America and the UK. So, we might start from there.
William