Category Archives: b+w

Dublin in the 1980’s, by Gerry Smith

(c) Gerry Smith. Screen capture from Blurb

I knew my friend, Gerry Smith, was into photography. I have seen some of his prints over the years, but not that many. We have lost touch in recent years, save for occasional contact. I knew that he was working on a Blurb book of some of his old work, and this evening he sent me a link to the book on Blurb and a youtube video of some select pieces. I have to say that I was blown away by the work, it really is excellent.

The work depicts Dublin in the 1980’s, and while I remember it murkily from my childhood, the photographs really represent a town from another time. Gerry says in his introduction

During the early 1980’s in Dublin, the inner city area was enveloped with half demolished buildings, unkempt sites and a general sense of disregard for the architectural heritage of the city. This was a manifestation of the overall depressed economic condition prevelant within Ireland at the time.

The wider richly layered social, commercial and architectural heritage represents the ‘soul’ of the inner city, which has developed over the centuries to establish the core of Dublin as unique in the qualities of scale, diversity and character of place.

The inner city on both sides of the River Liffey encompassed a rich diversity of uses and architectural quality, some of which have been regrettably lost to ‘development’ oppotunity, however the refurbishment of some areas has helped preserve and enhance much of the original quality of Dublin’s historic buildings and cultural content.

Some of the market activities that have survived to this day albeit in revised formats include the Moore Street market, the Smithfield Horsefair and the Dublin Corporation Wholesale markets on St. Michan’s Street also in the Smithfield area.

Many of the places captured in these images have become unrecognisable over the years due to redevelopment, however this collection provides a view of some of that which served us well for decades, but no longer remains.

While Gerry discusses the changing architecture of the city in his introduction, what really grabs me is the people in the photographs. The older men and women in particular, but also the children, are from another time and place – somewhere in the past, in history books, no longer present. And yet I need to remind myself that the children in the photos would have been a similar age to myself at the time – it’s not quite the ancient past!

I haven’t seen it in printed form yet, but this looks like a beautiful book that will appeal to a wide audience, not just to Dubs and the Irish.

– Rory

Link to the Blurb Book

Link to the youtube video

Link to Gerry’s website

Manzini Madness

(c) Rossella Manzini

Manic Manzini

(c) Rossella Manzini

More Manzini

(c) Rossella Manzini

More from Rossella

(c) Rossella Manzini

Irving Penn Portraits @ The National Portrait Gallery London until the 6th of June 2010.

Review By Padraig Spillane.

It may be a bit obvious to say that Irving Penn is one of the biggest innovators and stalwarts of portraiture. However, it is the truth and that’s something that’s always a bit thin on the ground. Irving Penn Portraits showing in the National Portrait Gallery in London is a timely reminder of his work, how his practice influenced photography and also the grace of the man behind the camera.

This exhibition is divided in to the decades of his work from the forties to the noughties, the decade of his death.  These divisions illustrate the shifts in his practice and what he is trying to garner from his subjects. Penn’s subjects are from the world of art and celebrity coming mainly from his time working at Vogue.

Penn remained predominately a studio portrait artist. However, there are shifts in style and structure through the decades. In the forties and early fifties his work took place in what seems to be a studio without a cleaner. The studio is minimal almost borderline austere and threadbare. The word neutral does not seem to do it justice. It has its own aura it but never takes away from the people being photographed. Old carpets used as amorphous props, and cigarette butts on an unswept floor add to an air of almost an in-between place.

Within this dishevelled space Penn constructed a corner. This is the centre for most of the forty’s studio work where his subjects stand, pose and play. What emanates is the person in the glory of singularity. It’s like wrapping a ruby in old newspaper. The effect of rarity is heightened. It’s not all paparazzi flash bulbs and glitter. It is a place away from all that. What is captured is: gesture, the finest details of the person and perhaps an inner drama laid bare.

By Irving Penn

By Irving Penn

By Irving Penn

“Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world. … Very often what lies behind the façade is rare and more wonderful than the subject know or dares to believe”.  Irving Penn.

There is a move from the fifties toward capturing more (and less) of the subject. Penn closes the frame in around the face allowing only the head and shoulders to be visible. This move heightens the drama of a gesture or a particular posture, as seen in his portrait of Richard Burton and perhaps more famously of Pablo Picasso. Penn is seemingly a master at putting his subjects at ease and getting what he wants. There is nothing showy about these photos while at the same time the subjects do not seem to be restrained. What seems to be given (dare I say it) is honest, whether the person is at play or just being as they are.

By Irving Penn

The quality of the prints is, well, quite high. I found myself nearly with my nose to glass looking at the textures of clothing and faces. Although the studio shots have an air of asceticism there is vigour at work. The pose of Truman Capote must be down to leaving him let rip and exploring his space in the corner.

The portrait of sculptor Alberto Giacometti is my personal favourite. The symmetry, the texture, Giacometti’s presence in the photo and the chiaroscuro are all so beautifully structured. There is seriousness and a sincerity thats captivating. There is a little mystery there too. The light falls on a wall of a man with his arms folded (if I’m being glib it’s a pose that is in contrast to Giacometti’s own sculptures). Is there a reticence to being photographed?  Is he tired? There seems to be an anxiety while everything is still. This tension obviously does not make it less of a portrait. It makes it even more. Giacometti seems to be what he is, a man being who he is. Irving Penn’s grace is to allow his subjects to be who they are.

By Irving Penn

I urge anyone who is heading to London to go to the National Portrait Gallery and find something wondrous in the eyes of Irving Penn’s portraits.

– Padraig

From Affection

From "Affection" by Padraig Spillane

These images are from Padraigs solo show, “Affection“, in Wilton library last year

From "Affection" by Padraig Spillane

From "Affection" by Padraig Spillane

From "Affection" by Padraig Spillane

Holga Tyres

Tyres by Rory O'Toole

Did a bit of scanning this morning. This is a typical Holga shot, of a wagon full of tyres down at my brother in laws farm in Limerick. The Holga is the cheapest most rubbish camera I own, and yet for the past two years I have much preferred the work I have produced from it over my 35mm Nikon. Maybe I live in a blurry world …

– Rory

More from Podge

Boat Plank by Padraig Spillane

I’m still working on getting the individual gallery pages made for each CorkAP member. In the mean time here’s another one from Padraig Spillane.

– Rory

Don McCullin at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester

Don McCullin

“… I don’t want to be remembered as a war photographer, or even classified as a war photographer. I hate it. You know, you can’t take photographs because you’re a machine-like person and you’ve been shown how to use a camera. You do it with your soul. …”

So begins Don McCullin thoughtfully at the start of this short slideshow presented by the BBC. An exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester showcasing his work marks McCullins 75th year. McCullin has always seemed to me to be a photographer of the highest integrity, and more so when you here him speak. Have a listen to him and view a few of his photographs here.

– Rory

Swans in Rostellan Lake

By Rory O'Toole

I’m sitting here scanning a few recent rolls of film.  You know that feeling, as you see the shots for the first time, and you feel a bit crestfallen – are there any decent shots here at all? And then one comes along that looks like it might have some potential. So this is the first that grabbed me. A bit. I’m not really into pictures of birds or animals, but I kinda like the pure black and whiteness of this one. There wasn’t much colour in the air that day anyway. It was snowing, and most of the rest of the lake was frozen. So the white swans in the black water was pretty much how it was! Shot on Ilford FP4 with a Nikon F90X and 50mm f1.8.

– Rory

Scan #2

bedroom

bedroom by Miriam King

Another photo by Miriam King.

– Rory

Untitled

By Brian Dunne

Brian got a scanner for Christmas, as featured on the Late Late Toy Show 🙂

– Rory

CorkAP exhibition in Brew Cafe, Paul St, Cork

Matt002

– By Rory O’Toole

Cork Analogue Photographers will be exhibiting work by members in Brew Coffee Shop on Paul’s Street in Cork for two weeks from 24 October 2009. Brew Coffee Shop is open on Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday from 12 noon to 5pm and from Tuesday to Saturday from 9am to 5pm.

– Rory

A Short History of Photography at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery Week 1

80668577Niépce, 1827

So last Wednesday Padraig and I attended the first of six lectures on a Short History of Photography at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery. The first weeks lecture was presented by Fiona Kearney, Director of the Glucksman gallery. Miriam didn’t make the first night, so this post could be titled “Notes for Miriam”!

The first slide that Fiona presented was of the first photograph ever made (or at least the earliest surviving), which was made by French inventor Niépce in 1827. This image was fixed on a metal plate, and showed a scene from a window of a  house. The exposure would have taken many hours, and so the necessity of finding a place to keep the box still for that length of time probably dictated the scene produced as much as anything else.

Niépce collaborated with Louis Daguerre who went on, some 12 years later to patent a process known as the daguerreotype.

Boulevard_du_Temple_by_DaguerreDaguerre – Boulevard du Temple, Paris, 1838


A daguerreotype is essentially a negative image,  exposed directly onto a plate bearing silver halide.  It is a single negative process, and prints cannot be made from the plate. Although the end result is a negative, the mirrored surface appeared as a positive when a dark background was reflected onto it.

Henry Fox Talbot, an English inventor, perfected his own process, and in 1839 invented the negative process. With his process, the calotype, many prints could be made from a single negative. Although the daguerreotype was more popular at the time (possibly because it was a free to use patent, unlike the calotype which was licensed), the fact that Fox Talbot’s calotype was a double negative process meant that it became the precursor to most late 19th and 20th century photographic processes.

Latticed_window_at_lacock_abbey_1835Henry Fox Talbot – Latticed window in Lacock Abbey in 1835

Although the early photographers were essentially expert inventors and chemists, Fiona impressed upon us during her lecture that an artistic eye guided the creation of the image from the begining. The second photograph above, Boulevard du Temple, Paris, 1838, by Daguerre, is a wonderful example of this in my eyes. This is a technically interesting photograph, because the Boulevard appears to be empty, despite the fact that this should have been a busy street, full of life. The only apparent sign of life is the two figures towards the bottom left of the scene – a man standing still to have his shoes shined, and the shoe shiner. What has happened is that the exposure took so long that the only people that stayed still long enough to be recorded were the shoe shiner and his customer. I wonder if Daguerre and this man were in cahoots, as quite apart from the technical aspect, the two figures add enormously to the beauty of the scene.

800px-The_Horse_in_MotionEadweard Muybridge – The Horse In Motion

From the begining, photographers were very influenced by painters, and painting, in turn, was influenced and changed by photography. One of the things that photography did was change the way that we see. Eadweard Muybridge was commissioned by Leland Stanford to scientifically prove whether or not all four hooves left the ground during a gallop (possibly so that Stanford could win a bet!). Muybridge achieved this with his “The Horse In Motion” series of photographs, and in so doing changed the way we see, and the way artists paint.  No longer would paintings such as Epsom Derby by Théodore Géricault appear realistic. Indeed to modern eyes the horses in this painting appear to be flying rather than galloping, with all four hooves off the ground!

epsomderbyThéodore Géricault – Epsom Derby

And so some artists began to paint in such a way that now appears more realistic, since the invention of photography. Below is “Race Horses” by Degas. As you look at the painting, your eye is drawn to the startled horse in the center of the frame, and to modern eyes, this looks “more correct”, again due to photography.

degasraceDegas – Race Horses

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570px-Roger_Fenton's_waggonMarcus Sparling seated on Roger Fenton’s photographic van, Crimea, 1855.


Roger Fenton was the first photographer to go to war, commissioned in 1855 to the Crimean War to photograph the troops. Although he had to carry wagon loads of glass plates and chemicals, the photographs that were produced immediately changed the way foreign wars were reported on. Seeing the devastating impact of foreign war in images, rather than reading about them, had enormous impact – the written word could not compete.

784px-Fenton_cannonballs_crimeaRoger Fenton – The Valley of the Shadow of Death

The technology of the time meant that the photographer could not actually photograph the action as it happened, so early war photographs tended to be of scenes and landscapes – cannonballs on a road, dead bodies on the fields. And, long before photoshop, accusations of image manipulation were ripe. Did the photographer move the bodies to increase the impact of the horror of the scene. Were the cannon balls moved onto the road? And if so, was he morally right to do this?

mathew-brady-1863Mathew Brady, 1863

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An image that was certainly manipulated, if that’s the right word, was “Fading Away” by Henry Peach Robinson in 1858.

Henry_Peach_Robinson_Fading_Away_1858.sizedHenry Peach Robinson – Fading Away

This photograph was made from five different plates, or negatives.  At the time, this was a shocking image to its audience. It depicts a dying woman being attended to by two nurses or family members, with her husband staring mournfully out a window in the background. It was a shocking image, considered too real, despite the fact that paintings of such a scene were commonplace. It was the apparent realism of the photograph that shocked his audience, who considered it a step too far.

Fiona’s lecture also looked at the impact that photography made on the environment right from the early days. The formation of Yosmite as a National Park came about partly because of the photographs that were taken there. As people travelled there to make photographs of the natural beauty, so it was recognised that tourism was a new factor, and steps were made to preserve such places.

Photography moved away from trying to emulate painting, and the fashion for pictorialism was replaced by a search for “truthfulness” in photography by photographers such as Weston and Ansel Adams. But still the artistic eye led the way, composition improved, and the idea of photography as an art form was fought for and grew stronger.

We can see the path from where photography began gives us a clue to where we are now. The world is aware that images can be and are often manipulated. A photograph is not always truthful. But an artist can use photography to make a statement about the world he lives in now.

viewing_the_ice_floesSean Hillen – Viewing the Ice Floes

Rory