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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
VILLAGEAugust/September
An exhibition of family
photographs stirs up
suppressed feelings
Ireland raw, happy
and dysfunctional
Shirley Clerkin
CULTURE
IN THE STICKS
August/September VILLAGE
W
HILE viewing the images in The
Photo Album of Ireland exhibi-
tion, currently showing in the
Gallery of Photography in Dublin’s Temple
Bar, it occurred to me that we know exactly
who we are. We just do not always want to
admit it, or show it.
Photos can make judgements just like
words; on a baby: “She’s a wee dote”, or on a
good-looking girl: “You would stand to look
at her” or on one with confidence “She thinks
a lot of herself, that one”. God forbid the fam-
ily tree would be let down with a “Would you
look at the state of her ” or even worse: “It
was far from that she was reared”.
I am one of those women that was doted
on in my chubby, baby years, all softness and
pallor. It was okay to be outrageously baby-
ish, as I was in fact a baby.
I was an awkward teenager, less doted
upon, spotty and pasty (and oft reminded
of this). But God, I tried to rise above it all,
based on a piece of information I gleaned
from a documentary on the human brain
which said that humans only used % of
their grey and white matter. I determined to
use more of mine to make up the gap.
As a result of my diligence I was fifteen
when I found myself on a boat to Station
island, Lough Derg, County Donegal to work
on St Patrick’s Purgatory.
The boatman, Michael, was a hardy, fair
(he insisted strawberry blond) fella, with
ruddy cheeks and strong arms to match his
accent so naturally I bit his head off, as I was
a bit above my station with nerves.
It was a good come down, working on the
island. The nun in charge immediately put
me on the back foot and pulled the rug from
under my carefully tended confidence, by
insisting that I was days late for my duty.
Thankfully though, not a bare one, as staff
could wear shoes, unlike the pilgrims.
Then she befuddled me with tales of how
she had lost six pounds since arriving on the
island a week or so previously. I was well put
out, and thought I better hold tightly onto my
few bob in case someone nicked it. It took me
a right while to realise that she was talking
about her weight, and subconsciously I sup-
pose, she wanted me to commiserate with
her or more likely congratulate her on her
figure. You might have stood to look at her.
Only she was a nun.
Then of course, I made the mistake of
climbing down off my salt pillar and strik-
ing up a friendship with the boatman, who
was only a lad himself.
I was found fraternising with the pilgrims
one day when some of them were looking for
directions. Next thing, I was moved from my
post in the Priests and Staff kitchen, to the
laundry. Pulling yards of sopping wet sheets
from industrial washing machines was not
easier than cutting cabbage and carrots by
hand for coleslaw.
But I had further to fall yet. My career
prospects on the island were cut short with
a “You know what you’ve done” accusation
by the chief-nun. I never found out what I
did; but at the time I thought it might have
involved the disappearing ice-
cream (but that wasn’t me).
Only in later years, while in fact
talking to a Magnum Photographer
about the island one night at the
Prix Pictet photographic exhibi-
tion in Dublin, did he hit upon a
reason for my expulsion. It wasn’t
what I had done at all, he said,
provocatively. They all wanted to
sleep with you. You were stirring up
suppressed feelings in others. They needed
someone to blame.
On reflection, I think he was on to
something. As a permanent reminder of
those short but luminous few weeks, my
likeness was taken and is in the book
‘On Lough Derg’ by photographer Liam Blake
and Deirdre Purcell. Grinning together with
my friend Bernie, I am standing there hold-
ing a copy of ‘To Light a Penny Candle’ by
Maeve Binchy.
If you saw that picture, you would not
know the story, but you would glimpse us,
two young girls in baggy t-shirts, and see
something that the photographer wanted
to say. We pestered Blake to take our photo,
which he did very grudgingly. Only after-
wards probably did he notice my reading
material and then he saw that it would made
the cut.
Unlike Blake’s photo of us on the island,
most of the photos in The Photo Album of
Ireland exhibition are taken by family mem-
bers for private use, and have come from
biscuit tins or carefully sheathed leather-
bound albums. They are frozen memories:
moments, often so carefully choreographed
to give the best impression that it is what
they don’t show, that sometimes makes the
viewer wonder.
The project team invited people to share
their family photographs, to look at the
social history of Ireland from the viewpoint
of family.
Sontag in her book ‘On Photography’
wrote, “Through photographs, each family
constructs a portrait-chronicle of itself – a
portable kit of images that bears witness to
its connectedness”.
My father took part in the project, and
shared old black-and-white images of our
extended family and some of his extensive
slide collection, covering happy and sad
times from the s on the border. A
image of my thoroughly modern grand-
mother pictured in trousers with a bicycle,
blown up to almost full-size on one gallery
wall shrank time for me, although she died in
. Written on the back of the tiny original
she had written “What will J.J. [my grandfa-
ther] think of this?”.
The invention of cheap cameras like the
Box Brownie made photography a demo-
cratic medium. A documented, chronicled
life became possible for many, un-reliant on
expensive portraiture and family archives.
Photographs of the Irish, whether here or
abroad, new or old, allow us as individuals
to be pinned down into small exactitudes,
but together we are one large and dysfunc-
tional family. •
The Photo Album of Ireland continues in the
Gallery of Photography, Temple Bar, until 31
August
You know
what you’ve
done!
“
Shanahan
family,
1960s
