Proposal for understanding the image  

Portals on the Historic Town of Maynooth

Seán Durack

For my project I propose to do a photographic history of Maynooth Town concentrating on its doorways and windows.  These portals offer the viewer a sense of the origin and development of the town.   Maynooth is a unique place in that was the centre of power in Ireland under the leadership of the Fitzgeralds (Garrett Mór and Gearoid Óg) who lived in the Geraldine Castle and ruled as Lord Deputies of Ireland in the 15^th and 16^th centuries.  It became a landlord planned town under the Duke of Leinster who lived at Carton and under whose influence it became a university town with the establishment of St. Patrick’s College in 1795 and the National University of Ireland Maynooth in 1997. The expansion of the college particularly from the 1840s includes Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin and J.J. McCarthy designed buildings. In the town itself there is the Charter School, there are labourers’ cottages as well as first and second class dwellings, a former convent and school hall, St. Mary’s Church of Ireland, shop entrances and coach entrances.  Images up to the current time will be included. Recent buildings in Maynooth include a Scott Tallon Walker Library in the University. The reason I picked this as a topic is because I am interested in local studies. In 2011 I completed an NUI certificate in local studies at Maynooth. My project was Maynooth a socio-economic profile 1901-1911.

The exhibition will be called Portals on the Historic Town of Maynooth. The exhibition be of aimed at people who are interested in local studies and not just those interested in Maynooth history but town history, it will interest those interested in architecture and the built environment, it will be on interest to International Students to Maynooth. It will also be an exhibition that could be disseminated online and be of interest to bodies such as Maynooth Community Council, Kildare County Council, and especially to Maynooth’s  twinned town, Canet-en-Rousillon in the south of France. The exhibition could be put on display in in the Geraldine Castle by the OPW. Carton House was host to the Irish Open this year and will be again next year and this project may be part of the Festival activities and will be organised around that event.  Information about the exhibition will be carried by the Maynooth Community Council Newsletter (free newspaper delivered to 5,000 households in Maynooth)  and webpage, Kildare.ie whats on page, and art related links such as Space and Place.

The focus on doors and windows presents a challenge and would be a new approach from what has been done in the past.  The last formal photographs of the town are in the Lawrence collection and concentrate on the Geraldine Castle, College Entrance, and Carton Demesne.    Seeing the history of Maynooth through its doors and windows at different times draws the viewer attention to details that might otherwise be overlooked and allows for the inclusion of atmospheric images.  We see doors and windows everyday but take little notice of them. The beauty of these portals is missed by most of the population.

The project has to be completed by April 2014.  The first month, November, will be taken up with research on the town’s history, visiting the relevant buildings and taking notes.   I will take many photographs of the same image at different times between December and February.  From this collection I will make a short list of images that best describes the history of the town from distant past to the present day.  

I will use the Maynooth Historic Towns Atlas edited by Arnold Horner as a source which will allow me to do an historical survey of the town.  From this I will be able to get the chronological order correct from the earliest doors and windows to the later ones – from the Geraldine Castle, to Carton Demesne, St. Patrick’s College, Leinster Cottages, Geraldine Hall and other dwellings in the town and the newer modern buildings.  

Photosprint

Halloween

Street style

Street Art

Dirty old town

Fixing The Shadows

Henry Fox Talbot

I watched a documentary recently and I found it very interesting. The way it was constructed with the different images and effects to produce it was fascinating to watch . The information about the various people involved, techniques used and how photography has taken on different ways of life from the very early stages to the present day was fascinating to listen to also. From the documentary, I learned about two figures Louis Daguerre who was painter and Henry Fox Talbot who was an inventor and the photographs they produced. I found Louis Daguerre's photographs extremely life like because of the way they suck up into the surface and I found Henry Fox Talbot's photographs beautiful and atmospheric. I also learned about the two techniques that they had discovered which became revolutionary in the world of photography which I found very interesting. Daguerre's was metal based which eventually led to the Daguerrotype which was the first practicable photographic process and Talbot's was paper based which would eventually lead to to the Kodak which was a camera. The Kodak was of particular interest to me. It was invented by a man named George Eastman who was a bank clerk but was interested in photography. The Kodak  changed the way the people looked at the camera. People for the first time looked at the camera and said cheese. So it became more an adventure and more of a fun enterprise and not the serious one it was before where people were very stoical in their expressions as it was meant to be a work of art. He also popularized the use of the roll of film which would eventually make photography more of an industry. The Kodak would eventually make important use of the Vernacular which refers to the creation of photographs taken from everyday life. They usually were taken by amateurs. The Kodak became an important form of vernacular expression as the photographs it took became a freeze in time. Over the years photography has taken on two main streams of art, one as an art form and the other one as a way to get people to remember something.  So overall  I thought this documentary was well put together and the information was extremely interesting and I would recommend it for viewing.

Gallery of Photography Review

Vilnius: Photographs of Old Town is the title of a exhibition  by  Lithuanian photographer Kestutis Stoskus and is on display in the Gallery of Photography, Temple Bar Dublin and runs from 3-15 October. The exhibition was staged by the National Museum of Lithuania and the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Ireland and it is the first time that Stoskus' work appears in Ireland.

The exhibition offers a chance to see 44 black and white photographs depicting images of the old town of Vilnius.  The photographs were taken from 1995 up to 2004. His work depicts the architectural heritage of Vilnius, and he reveals the character of the essence of the city - the images are well composed, technically brilliant, taken when the light is just right for the photographer.  But there is also a feeling that the images come from an older world (older than when they were taken). They are atmospheric with a sense of melancholy and loneliness.  There is very little in the images to date them. People rarely appear in his work, there are no cars, advertising bill boards etc.  The  focus is  on architecture as portrait  and is the essential quality of Stoskus' work.

The exhibition is accompanied by a well designed catalogue. The introduction by  Dr. Raminta Jurenaite is well written, insightful and informative.  Nine of the of the images from the exhibition are used in the catalogue and the round serif font add to the quality of the production.   I found the exhibition captivating and I would highly recommend it. 

The Lift - a review by Sean Durack

The Lift review by Sean Durack  

Highly original, excellent short film about the documentation of the lives of a London community who live in a tower block. The filmmaker Marc Isaacs sets himself up with a camera in a London Tower block lift and films the users of the lift over the course of several days. From time to time he asks people questions such as what did they dream about last night?, what was their favourite childhood memory? and was religion important them? A trust is built up and some people in this multi-cultured community offer more information about themselves as time goes on. It is a fascinating, captivating, atmospheric and moving film with funny moments throughout which is the result of the  filmmaker’s flawless attention to detail that helps to create a vivid, credible portrait in the everyday life of the London community. Impressive debut film for Isaacs. Not to be missed.