Only recently it dawned on me that in mirroring the activity of the search team at Wilkinstown I have been photographing this location almost every weekend since last September and I realized, as I stacked the work print boxes on top of each other in preparation for an edit, that quite possibly I was pontentially suffering from  Pittsburgh Syndrome’.* While on one level it would be an honour in a certain way to make photographs that shared the psychology that Cartier Bresson beautifully ascribed to Eugene Smith’s photographs as being ‘captured between the shirt and the skin’, it was the volume and the inherent difficulty of  distillation that perturbed me. How can one make sense of a mound of, perhaps too many, can there be too many? Photographs.

And so over the last few weeks of decompression from teaching and spending much time walking ‘Past the….’ and floating around in the goodwill and overall success of Ireland’s first ever Photo Festival, and visiting some of the other locations being searched while also finally revisiting some others that have resolved their story and unfortunately attending another set of too close funerals,  the back of the head thinking was in progress as I felt it was time to examine the work and see what was there. The basic initial problem was, as with most things, that of structure and structure in relation to ‘the book’, which is always my starting point. Reasonably quickly the simple idea of sequencing to parallel the timeline of making the work  sprang to mind. So far so good, possibly.  The notion being  that the shift in seasons and aligned variations of light might somehow convey the durational aspect of over ten months ‘emptying a swimming pool with a spoon’ and act as a small mirror and tribute to the patience and endurance of this endeavour.

I don’t want to get into the maleness of numbers and quantities but at present my next issue was how to distill roughly 250 reasonable images thus far, to possibly 70 to 80 where one could explore the repetition but not be repetitious. I tried to shuffle them manually but my brain could not hold on to them and assemble them due to the volume. Currently I don’t have the wallspace, floorspace, ceiling space to ‘stick and stare’ – so not a runner either. All these being methods I have managed to use before, wherein I slowly reduce a bunch of photographs to a sequence, then photocopy or Blurb this edit into a book in terms of book size, image size, title, text, etc. The task with this work began to feel like one of the earthmounds at Wilkinstown – composed of many fine grains and everytime you climb one you disturb what is settled so that when you look back at the way you have come up things have rearranged themslves and it doesnt look quite the same  as when you started. It began to feel insurmountable. I couldnt handle all that evolving time with what felt like a neanderthal brain.

And then it hit me – don’t distill now, but put the photomound into a Blurb-like book programme in the sequence of the passing months as the base editline is somewhat akin to the timeline of video editing programmes and would allow me to track across my small film of still images quickly and effectively to get a sense of the narrative and dialogue between photographs. Whats the big deal you might ask. The point is that I was stuck in terms of how I usually assemble a book maquette and possibly would have spent weeks taking the photographs out of the box, shuffling them a bit and returning them their own casket/grave and getting more frustrated, fed-up and blocked to the point where one avoids opening the box. This small step to the left reminds me of my chemistry days and the concept of activation energy – the energy required to get a reaction going but in certain types of reaction once overcome the reaction generates enough energy to sustain itself to completion. Without this initial energy the components sit and mingle with each other but nothing happens.

The next small breakthrough which came quickly was the title and a solid idea for the cover, which gave me a vessel to work within.  The cover below of a ‘road’ through the recovered landscape last September was not in my initial mental shortlist but emerged as on one level it echoes the image of the road on the cover of Innocent Landscapes and has other aspects that are a bit long-winded to eplore here. So far so good, possibly.  The rear image shows the recently replanted trees that have autumned in summer while the day closes. So far so good, possibly. The title ‘Small Acts of Memory’ was a title for a blog that I wrote about 35mm analogue photography but has now been borrowed and I feel it’s very suitable. So far so good, possibly. At present the only decision to be resolved concerns the subtitle which currently makes no reference to Wilkinstown but uses the name of the wood itself – possibly a second line underneath with the placename might be appropriate to connect with the previous work as a potential memory spike. So possibly not so good so far, possibly.

As regards the timespan of 1999/2010 I suppose that is a small note of optimism for a proximate resolution.

Possible Front Cover

Possible Front/Rear Full Bleed Cover

It’s a reasonable start. The next month will be spent shuffling along the timeline and when close to completion I will print out a basic laser copy to explore the work as a physical object and see does it survive the journey from imagination to a hard reality.

Innocent Landscapes, Resumed Search, Wilkinstown, June 2010.

At Wilkinstown they have spent the last few weeks flattening the mounds of inverted time, dispersing the memory and all that remains is two small islands of untouched trees sitting slightly off-centre in what now is almost a returned, flattened and scoured square. These are now being used as a source for a renewed Wood in this empty space and presumably the earth beneath these will be sifted for completion. The untouched woodland lying further north that the cadaver dogs recently visited awaits it’s fate of ‘I can’t go on, I’ll go on’.

In the meantime, a slightly strange event occurs in the lower field for the trees replanted in May. Somewhat like the resumed searches, nature has gone backwards to move forwards. It is autumn in the middle of summer.

Innocent Landscapes, New Search, Carrickrobin, June, 2010

‘There are three sides to every story’ began the local man on one of my recent visits to Carrickrobin. Perhaps you could add another two to act as a channel to allow the truth to come out as well, which is where this search is at now. An initial small area, approximately 40m x 25m, has been painstakenly searched since last October and so far a resolution is still hiding and eluding the time team. Nature has already begun to reclaim some of the re-settled bog and green shoots breakthrough here and there. The search has now started to extend further down the lane, already consuming a section of the hopeful moat excavated to drain this wetland bog the previous February. What was margin has become mud. And on it will go.

Innocent Landscapes, New Search, Carrickrobin, June, 2010

While the ruminating cattle in an adjacent field look on a new moat and margin is being created in the distance of the flattened reeds and Irises and its many sides reveal different narratives of smeared strata – ‘your side, my side, and the truth’

Innocent Landscapes, New Search, Carrickrobin, June, 2010

Innocent Landscapes, New Search, Carrickrobin, June, 2010

Innocent Landscapes, New Search, Carrickrobin, June, 2010

Dublin

I have a firm dislike of labels or more accurately boxes into which people can pour all sorts of prejudices and assumptions. However I do believe that the world, like ancient Gaul, is divided into three parts. You are either a Beckett (wo)man, a Joyce (wo)man and, if you are really  lucky, your own (wo)man. My literary loyalties rest firmly with Sam and on good days I also manage to be my own (wo)man. And so deliberately eschewing the ever more popular and ever more ‘scrotumtightening’ 16-06-10, I decided to make a walk on the 21_06-10 (whose numbers, for your information, individually add up to ten) and a day of what appears to be infinite daylight.

Now, in the current climate, an exclamation mark rather than a question mark might be a more appropriate journey but I decided to walk in a semi-circle or hemisphere (to allow for variations) as it seemed a good idea at the time. There are of course a host of highly conceptual reasons for this decision but I wont trouble you with them now. I have always wandered the streets as an antidote, or more accurately a counterpoint, to the stillness of the land and since decommissioning my wee Leica (for now) in order to draw a line under Analogue Days 2004-2009 I have been very disciplined and it has not been removed from the bunker deep within the Irish landscape. Recently I began this series ‘Some Notes on Street Photography’ as way of moving on, but also working within, my tradition of street photography. These walks as presented are first drafts, first attempts that most likely will end up under the bed a decommissioning bunker I would recommend to all. That said, somewhat like the Princess and her problem with the Pea, this method can make for many an uncomfortable night’s sleep.

What a disaster this walk turns out to be. Firstly, it’s a slab of blue-sky day so the light is hard and the photographs appear to contain too many shadows. Secondly I am using a borrowed ‘professional’ digital SLR – you know the type – really good cameras but devoid of a personality even when used in non machine gun mode, so somehow I never feel the photographs I am trying to make – maybe it’s the coitus interruptus of the mirror or possibly the fake semi-discreet motordrive sound. One way or another there is no bang or bing when I click and yet when I view the images later there not so bad (?) just unfelt in the way that lovers feel when east goes west and west goes east and the interruptus takes place and yet the coitus is continuous.

Thirdly, in spite of a pocketful of ennui and a pocketful of energy my biggest mistake is to make a plan, to have a route, even if only vaguely defined. These ‘Walks’ need the possible randomness of some sort of Chaos theory, so after a while feeling fatigued and forsaken I give up and slump home to base camp for another day. Later in the week I do two more walks which feel more felt but time will tell. Fourthly even in non machine gun mode I am making too many photographs and not observing enough, there needs to be a rhythm between looking and embalming. Anyway never afraid to fail, here we go warts and all.

Walk Two, 21^st June 2010, Dublin

Past the the panting dog who may be lost

Past the graffitti of the Celtic catman

Past the line of ants queing in the heat on their way home

Past the place that was frozen and is now in bloom                         Click

Past the  notice for virus problems

Past the the young woman struggling to empty the flower pot

Past the woman with the black cat on her T-shirt, I should have clicked

Past the Indian family sitting on the canal bench

Past the the busman consulting his diary

Past the red pole                                     Click

Past the yellow pole                                     Click

Past the two women in his and hers                        Click

Past the second woman                         Click

Past the young woman in flat red shoes                        Click

Past the the young woman in tall red shoes                        Click

Past the miniscule plague                        Click

Past the swan shielding her cygnet                         Click

Past the anonymous shrine

Past the the orchids in the window of the property developer

Past the umpteenth discount book shop

Past the beauty shop called Heaven

Past the arrangement of people and trees as the Countess looks on          Click

Past the shy plastic bag swirling in the shadows                        Click

Past the the young man on his phone who is looking for a photographer

Past the window with five climates                         Click

Past the squared rainbows and the small white cloud                       Click

Past the elegant statue now trapped behind bars                         Click

Past the Hirstian motorbike                        Click

Past the text which states screw the bankers vote no

Past the now starving cat who greets me meoww

‘Grand view’ the young boy breathlessly speaks as he cycles by me trying to make his way up the steep road on the edge of which I have perched my tripod and camera. It’s a fitness cycle as he is dressed in a t-shirt and football shorts – a local boy I assume – he was probably four or five years old when I first stood at this roadside overlooking Ballynultagh in 1999 which had been revealed as the location of the remains of Danny McIlhone who having left Belfast, was abducted from Dublin where he had gone to live, on the 14^th May 1981.

While agreeing with him with a ‘t’is indeed’ I encourage him onwards and upwards with a ‘keep it going’. Returning to my view I wonder does he know about this view and the story it contains. As is often here, the clouds here are performing a strange ballet, occasionally and tantalizingly allowing the sun to move torch-like across the valley but never quite where I want it – I have observed this many times here and had at times naively hoped that one day it might provide a divine-like answer. Speaking in 2008 to the forensic archaeologists who were then carrying out the resumed search here it was touching that they too shared a similar experience and desire. This location is perhaps the most ‘scenic’ of all the locations. It is set in a valley through which the river Liffey flows in the early stages of it’s journey towards Dublin and it is a place of constant light changing elusive moments.

Innocent Landscapes Resumed Search, Ballynultagh, 2008

It was here in 2008 that I first became aware of the resumed searches. I was on my round of annual revisits and had observed some days previously what appeared to be some form of activity at Bragan where a large pit had been excavated but I was uncertain as it was unlike anything I had encountered before in the searches of 1999 again. The preciseness of the area investigated at Ballynultagh appeared to be significant and suggested a different approach. A few weeks later I returned and the repetitive jerky yellow arms of the JCB’s were back in motion. The subsequent conversation with the ‘time team’ gave a small insight although it was restricted due to the strict confidentiality terms under which they work and all my current work on this subject is dependent on curiosity, determination and attempts at reading landscapes – its only informed source is myself, I am on the Inside, I am on the Outside. I met again with the team in early October at which point they had resigned themselves for a return the following spring due to the weather becoming tougher. However they returned again in November according to reports I read in the media as a result of new information whereupon the partial remains of Danny McIlhone were subsequently recovered. This receiving of ‘new information’ is puzzling as essentially they were digging in the same area as in 1999 and 2000. This naturally is irrelevant as it is the return that matters.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this location was that its easiest access was through an abandoned farm and the fields that lay below it and yet there was this final puzzling last detail of having to cross the river to reach the site that was strange in a way that is strange for a very good reason. As it was, this location was very secret, it was in the middle of nowhere however in crossing the river you move from private to public land – a small crossing, tied up in intimate knowledge of the local landscape.

Last Friday I waited and watched from the road that winds its way past this landscape, waiting for an hour in the hope of some light during which time the boy freewheels back towards me with a broad smile ‘I survived’ he says with pride and swishes by me. I settle for the image below from 5 or six exposures. The landscape seems at this distance to be unchanged from the previous year. The upturned rocks and bare landscape still showing clearly the extent of the resumed search in 2008 and it is only later when comparing it to a photograph from last year that I notice the small changes and the slight recovery in this isolated place. Uncannily the light isn’t much different either and later as I move down through the fields the clouds clear for a while and I get a chance to work.

Innocent Landscapes Revisited, Ballynultagh, 2009

Innocent Landscapes Revisited, Ballynultagh, 2010

Innocent Landscapes Revisited, Ballynultagh, 2009

Innocent Landscapes Revisited, Ballynultagh, 2010

At ground level of course things are a little different and the recovery though slow is evident. When making these annual photographs I never bring images with me and I always try to work off my memory, which of course is faulty and not perfect. This location unlike many of the other locations has a permanent shrine that was erected by the family of Danny McIlhone after the initial searches – a plaque bearing simple heartfelt words was placed together with a Celtic cross on a large rock that had acted as a temporary shrine during the searches.

DANNY McILHONE

ABDUCTED AND MURDERED

14^th MAY 1981.

WHOSE BODY LIES HIDDEN IN THESE MOUNTAINS

FOREVER LOVED AND MISSED BY HIS DAUGHTER

SISTERS AND BROTHERS

And in my Inside-Outside status I wonder about these two rocks placed together in 2008, which are approximately 100 metres from the family shrine in a scarred but healing landscape. One of them bears an inscribed X whose visibility will no doubt wane as time and the weather roll by.

Innocent Landscapes Revisited, Ballynultagh, 2010

Innocent Landscapes Revisited, Ballynultagh, 2010

As a note of hope for the resumed ongoing searches at Wilkinstown, Carrickrobin and Colgagh I often reflect on a photograph made on the last day of the searches in 2000 at Ballynultagh. I have spoken in the past of this photograph in wistful terms as to what could possibly be secreted six inches, six feet, sixty feet further. It must be noted that what was sought did not rest beyond but lay backwards over my shoulder in front of this, some distance away and yet close to, or within, the areas searched in 1999 and 2000 but he was there, waiting patiently for a homecoming.

Innocent Landscapes , Ballynultagh, 2000

Its difficult to do a minutes silence on a blog, but on a day when the Establishment rolls back on itself after a protracted period maybe a few words will do. There are eerie echoes in the two inventories of names below. The first list of fourteen people is of those killed on the 30^th January 1972 now known as Bloody Sunday.

John Duddy, Patrick Doherty, Bernard McGuigan, Hugh Gilmour, Kevin McElhinney, Michael Kelly, John Young, William Nash, Michael McDaid, James Wray, Gerald Donaghy, Gerald McKinney, William McKinney, John Johnston

Seamus Wright, Kevin McKee, Jean McConville, Peter Wilson, Eamonn Molloy, Columba McVeigh, Robert Nairac, Brendan Megraw, John McClory, Brian McKinney, Gerard Evans, Danny McIlhone Charlie Armstrong, Eugene Simons, Seamus Ruddy

The second list of fifteen people is the most up to date list of those Disappeared in the Troubles. Unbeknown to most people at the time and subsequently, it came into being in the same year (October 1972) with the disappearance of Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee and whose remains are currently being searched for at Wilkinstown. One group of people from one city (Derry), the other group mostly, though not exclusively, from another (Belfast). If you absent Robert Nairac due to the circumstances of his killing, you are left with an equal number of people from the same ‘community’ whose fate is inextricably bound to that one event. Numbers are strange things and this balancing feels slightly odd and prophetic.

Today a big public lie that wounded a city and its people and that created an inevitable, painful and discernible narrative has been expunged. In the meantime, in another place, a memorial card that is being swallowed by the simple growth of nature and yet stubbornly resists its full ingestion is a small reminder of what the ongoing resumed searches mean – an attempt to retrieve from time a small truth and an invisible history.

Innocent Landscapes, Resumed Search, Wilkinstown, June 2010

http://report.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org/

Innocent Landscapes, Resumed Search, Coghalstown Wood, Wilkinstown, June  2010

Last weekend as I ambled long the lane that leads up to the site I met the cadaver dogs. They were a motley crew of various breeds but appeared, like most dogs, to be pretty cheerful in spite of their onerous duties. Again as often on this project it was a brief chance encounter where little is said between the human mongrels out sniffing this landscape. As they run out of fields to excavate both searched and unsearched from the first attempts in 1999 and 2000 the attention has now shifted to the untouched wood that lies north, further down the lane. I had discovered this recently when struggling on one of those terrible blue-sky days which usually forces me to go seeking shelter from such awful light in a wooded glade. Wandering down the grassy track that ran by this woodland revealed a number of the blue bamboo stick with grid annotation that have become familiar to me. These markers of an area to be explored were dotted here and there along the pathway and being ever so slightly curious I decided to see if these extended in a line across the woods, which they did and presumably in a straight line as due to the dense growth here and there it was very difficult at times to follow this invisible line. At times I would end up back where I started or at least where I think I started which reminded me of those lovely Beckett lines from Molloy which soon put me straight again.

“and having heard that when a man in a forest thinks he is going in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping in this way to go in a straight line. For I stopped being half-witted and became sly, whenever I took the trouble. And my head was a storehouse of useful knowledge. And if I did not go rigorously in a straight line, with my system of going in a circle, at least I did not go in a circle, and that was something”

Innocent Landscapes, Resumed Search, Coghalstown Wood, Wilkinstown, June 2010

One of the aspects that have emerged from looking at this landscape on and off over ten years is an exploration of the linear timeline of narrative and history. When I was first given directions to this place I remember scrawling down Coghalstown Wood, Wilkinstown on a blue folder that was near to hand but in assembling the book narrative the pre-name got dropped off to match the idea of all the locations being small largely unknown singly named townlands, known only to locals with local knowledge of each field and ditch. So this place became Wilkinstown, which actually doesn’t exist as a town with a gathering of houses and even a mini main street. In many ways all the locations in Innocent Landscapes are very real but could also be in a certain way of the imagination like the Bailegangaire of Tom Murphy or the Craggy Island of Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan.

When I first arrived at Wilkinstown back in 1999 the area being examined was no longer a wood as the first requirement of the police search team based on the information they had was to forge a clearing through an established woodland. In many ways I was suffering a side effect in my employment of late photography as explored and at times rightly criticized by David Campany in his essay in the Photoworks collection Where is the Photograph. So in many ways Coghalstown Wood didn’t exist as the potent locus of activity and the site here at Wilkinstown became two fields bounded, particularly on the Northern side, by a wooded area and yet now, as the search may reach into this residual woodland that was not deemed as site, it suddenly has become very real. In a strange way, theoretically at least, I am photographing this anonymous unsigned place before it became, if even in a small way, identified and named. An elliptical rather than conventional crow flying timeline of history has folded back on itself at this location. You could say that my patient visiting most weekends has been rewarded with a form of early photography – an opportunity to photograph before the human intervention leaves it’s trace, which of course, I will not resist.

Innocent Landscapes, Resumed Search, Coghalstown Wood, Wilkinstown, May  2010

And so at this point, a year on from this resumed search, it must feel for all involved somewhat like a phrase I heard on the radio recently ‘… like banging your head against a vicious circle’. But on it will go this hopeful walk in a hopefully straight line.

Innocent Landscapes, Resumed Search, Coghalstown Wood, Wilkinstown, June  2010

A walk into town, the first one in a long time. I am without camera so as a small comfort I start to list in my head a small litany of  ‘past the……’ noting verbally though internally, so as not to appear like the village madman, all the things I observe that I might put a frame around if I was armed. It’s an interesting game and I am doing fine without my shield, most of the things are possibly to be returned to or probably not worth embalming in time – no real masterpieces then. It’s a grey softish day, the first mild day of our summer, almost warm I’d say but a moist air is the payback for this small relief from the recent sharp air. I start to reflect on this list that is now getting longer and longer and the sound in my head appeals to me – it’s worth pursuing, maybe I can begin something new and sure what else am I doing. Nothing but nothing at all at all. And then it happens, I walk around a corner and a young painter has set up an easel and is painting a street scene but in a geometric quasi abstract and with quite a nice delicate bright palette of colour and he is standing close to this large green 6×7 shape that has been painted on a shop wall and inside the shop which sells suites and ties the stuff that is alien to me there is another palette of colour like a watercolour paint-box. Inside – Outside, Outside –Inside. And I stop and look and say Bugger!– I need to make this photograph – I look around seeking friend, foe, tourist or alien – anyone with a camera will do – I will borrow it momentarily to soothe my desire, simply click and then I can go on my way. No luck. I start calculating how long will it take me to walk back to the Shoebox – will he still be here?, maybe it will rain and he will take a break, maybe he wont come back if it does. What if it brightens up?, he will be on the shadow side then, not ideal, hmmmmm decisions, decisions. I walk home.

I walk back again into town, this time with camera and a small digital sound recorder with a low battery level, damned batteries they empty quicker than a recessionary bank account – I start my litany again, this time out loud but without fear, for am I not like all the other mad people, who now walk around cities apparently talking, laughing and crying to themselves. I am not alone. And the possible project grows in my head – this is where the true madness lies – a series of walks accompanied by a litany of things seen and the occasional photograph made. It could be called ‘Some Notes on Street Photography’. This is getting interesting.  And then I turn the same corner again and …………. good lad, he is still there – ah the slow time of painting, a wonderful thing, a marvelous thing. None of this click and be done with.

So many possibilities pass through the frame as I observe and steal from the ebb and flow. I click and then click a bit more. I am not so sure now, now that the frame is tight around and there is all that movement and distraction inside and outside that I had filtered away when I was simply looking and making photographs in my head. Now it’s for real. Time will tell ah the quick long time of photography, a wonderful thing, a marvelous thing.  I say a few words of encouragement to him as I pass by and wander back home and on the walk home I start to ponder a way of working with voiceover and photographs and by the time I have arrived back to base it has become an animation project – animated litany of words with simultaneous voiceover and intermittent photographs. Well not a bad canter for a simple walk into town although the H3D isn’t exactly a street camera and perhaps it would be interesting to mix the formats from compact to medium format to give the various future walks a feeling of spontaneity and variation. For now though this will have to do and yet I have a small variation in mind already. Maybe it’s something for the next posting.

Walk One, 18^th May 2010, Dublin

Past the white cat with the superior stare

Past the bottle containing some water

Past the elegant statue

Past the the strange purple liquid in the laneway

Past the gaping mouth that opens to the basement

Past the cheery beggar who wishes me a good day

Past the Botticelli girl from the gym carrying a bottle of water

Past the poster for Aung San Suu Kyi

Past the strange tropical plants in the park

Past the sweating man in the trench coat

Past the homeless man carrying a copy of the Mirror

Past the stressed woman with the red leather jacket shouting

into her phone  ‘it doesn’t matter I’ll pay for it now!’

Past the painting by that famous painter

Past the woman reading ‘The Secret Life of Bees’

Past the man whistling Barber’s Adagio for strings

Past the half eaten lollipop                          Click

Past the woman in the Range Rover who looks at me and I look back

Past the tourist couple studying the map

Past the tramp with the knarled stick who finds a tweed flat cap perched on a wall and removing his own tries the other, it’s a snug fit so it stays and the original goes into his pocket for another day; he shuffles on and so do I

Past the advertisement that says ‘cheat on meat’

Past the frayed blue rope wound around the black railings

Past the man with the blue-grey jumper carrying three boxes

Past the taxi-driver named Mick or is it John who offers to drive me around for free

Past the three numbered bins that read six, six, six

Past the bowl of extremely small fruit in the reception of the occupied building

Past the young man with the discreet earphones and the small white logo on his raincoat

Past the man with the gold envelope and the pink and white striped shirt

Past the sign that says ‘just eat’

Past the two plainclothes policeman sitting in the plainclothes van

Past the naked light boxes in the window of the empty building             Click

Past the young woman with the purple coat, the purple scarf, and the pink shoes

Past the sign that says ‘queue here for autographs’

Past the portrait studio with the photograph of the fresh baby suspended in two upraised arms

Past the bald man who looks at me and I look back

Past the empty office building

Past the sign that says ‘look left’

Past the man on the phone who says ‘John what’s your email’

Past the Bureau of Fraud Investigation (I wonder will they come after me?)

Past the woman photographing the window Click – but she catches me and so we talk for a while about the melancholy aloofness of mannequins Click

Past the crumpled brown bag lying dead in the dark laneway

Past the sign that states ‘neat dress essential’

Past the two women in synchronized step Click

Past the landscape paintings in the window

Past the sign that says that ‘Every Card is a Work of Art – Made in Ireland’

Past the wall where a sign was, and the new one will be            Click

Past the place with the ‘signature sandwiches’

Past the sad woman with the happy dog

Past the broken window

Past the woman in the pinstripe raincoat

Past the beautiful young woman with luscious lips who looks at me and suddenly yawns

Past the small lifting cage at the back of Captain Americas            Click

Past the two pigeons exiting the fire door                         Click

Past the mysterious woman hidden by the blue and pink umberella I should have clicked

Past the reversing truck going beep beep beep

Past the fire alarm in the empty shop Click

Past the business man in the back laneway pleading with his lover ‘no no, that’s impossible’

Past the painter working on a street scene                        Click

Dublin, 18-05-2010

Innocent Landscapes, Resumed Search, Wilkinstown, May, 2010

My concern for the trembling trees must have wafted along the winds towards County Meath as at the official beginning of another season Wilkinstown provided another shift in its ongoing narrative. It was one of those things that will make me return (this time three days in a row) seeking some decent light to work with before the landscape changes again. While it’s the sort of detail that possibly only matters to me, there is something very significant, not just in the replanting of the reclaimed young saplings from the encroaching trench in the adjacent field, but rather this alternative shallower trench and the exposed and uprooted trees laid out now for replanting. The evidence of the ongoing search has now begun to be truly erased and a yin and yang cycle commences.

Innocent Landscapes, Resumed Search, Wilkinstown, May, 2010

Why did I return? Because next week when they stop their work they will perhaps leave a field full of lilting and swaying, skinny futures – a significant metaphor in it’s own right – but that shallow trench stretching towards the horizon may not be present in the landscape and it is this unintentional temporary echo that resonates and reveals, and in doing so exposes something more than my slightly obsessive self but rather something about the act of photography and its ability to embalm small noteworthy moments from the flux of time.

Innocent Landscapes, Resumed Search, Wilkinstown, May, 2010

April_2010

It was my Birthday recently; the date, let alone the year, are naturally state secrets. As it happened, just around this anniversary of me being dragged a little reluctantly into the world (I was a forceps delivery), I had this portrait made of me. It’s a little flattering, what with the Kirk Douglas dimple and that faint but invisible smile, but methinks me has the bones of an eighteen year old, for look at those lovely clavicles. Although that said, if I am being truly honest the outer shell unfortunately resembles the painting in the attic.

Who said the camera never lies…….