Photos of Ireland of the 50s go on display in Dublin
French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson was known as ‘the eye of the century’ and captured the last images of Gandhi before his death.
However, pigs being slaughtered, family outings to the races, and upturned currachs were also the focus of his lens during his time in the Ireland of the 1950s and 1960s.
Opening an exhibition of his work, and that of US photographers Dorothea Lange and Robert Cresswell in the National Museum (Collins Barracks) tonight President Michael D Higgins said Cartier-Bresson was ‘a humanist photographer’, who ‘pioneered the genre of street photography’.
“I understand the majority of the Irish images on display have never been shown in Ireland or indeed elsewhere,” said Mr Higgins.
“So we are fortunate in seeing these images of a period often neglected by Irish historiography, one in which the professional, agricultural producers, and institutional forces took on a particular class formation which would last into the modern period,” Mr Higgins added.
The exhibition, curated by Fidelma Mullane, comprises 50 images by Cartier-Bresson, about 30 of which have never been exhibited anywhere in the world before.
Ms Mullane spent many months working with the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris to select the black and white images from some 4,000 in contact sheets.
The exhibition also comprises work by US photographers Dorothea Lange and Robert Cresswell. Lange, who is best known for her images of Depression Era America, was sent by Life magazine to document rural Co Clare.
Cresswell, an anthropologist based in Paris, lived in Kinvara, Co Galway while undertaking research.
Cresswell’s subsequent work was entitled Une Commuunauté Rurale de l’Irlande, and is now considered a seminal study of rural life.
Cartier-Bresson undertook several trips to Ireland, the first being in 1952, and the second a decade later. His images captured a society still dominated by the Catholic Church, but on the cusp of change.
Mr Higgins noted the photographers visited Ireland at a time when land would only support “one landholder....one dowry”, and emigration for most was the norm.
The President quoted the late critic and writer John Berger in emphasising the essential role of the arts in the “opening of pathways to different and better futures”.
Mr Higgins also highlighted the value of public spaces, including galleries and libraries.
“If we put the arts at the very edge of our society, place them out of the reach of the majority of our citizens, we do ourselves a great disservice,” Mr Higgins noted.
Ireland in Focus runs at the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, Dublin until April 2020.
