Battalion Deputy Commanding Officer. Commandant Rose-Anna White, 2019. “The Bloods ” Archival Pigment Print. 80cm x 80cm , Courtesy of the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny.

Laundry . 65cm x 65 cm. Archival Pigment Print on Bamboo paper.  Courtesy of the UCC Art Collection, Cork.

Under the title Opening The Gates, the 13th edition of PhotoIreland Festival presents the most comprehensive overview on the History and Practice of Photography in Ireland to date, running 7th July to 28th August 2022 in various locations, with the main venue at The Printworks, Dublin Castle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Politics of Place explores one of the defining obsessions of our national life, the notion of place. For a people so often uprooted and dispossessed, the identification of Irishness with place, with home and the ownership of land, even with the state itself, carries incredible weight. In mapping these contested territories, photographers have participated in a cultural shift that has seen our understanding of place and what it means deeply challenged. Considering how our sense of place, broadly defined, has been transformed, this exhibition addresses the profound changes that have reshaped Irish society over the last four decades, from the decline of the church to the impact of globalisation, through to ongoing crises around housing, migration, and the environment.

In moving away from traditional documentary towards more socially-engaged and inclusive ways of thinking about their medium, Irish photographers have been at the cutting-edge of contemporary trends. This exhibition has been curated to emphasise the diversity of visual and conceptual languages characteristic of recent photographic practice in Ireland. It reveals how photography has helped to interrogate what Irishness is, and also to reimagine what it might look like.
Curatorial Panel:  Lead curator: Darren Campion, Trish Lambe, Brendan Maher,

Archival Pigment Print 66cm x 80 cm