My latest RTÉ Arena essay is about the power of the photograph…

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The photograph

The kids have turned the house into an art gallery. Stick drawings with spindly limbs and dotted features. Knotted creatures and smiling clouds, stuck to doors and along the hall. There are even posters of plays performed in their bedrooms, along with a list of characters and proposed future dates.  Like with most galleries, consultation is needed when one of the exhibits is to be moved. One such negotiation led to us taking a photo of a potato-headed sketch on the wall before we could proceed with repainting the kitchen. Of course, the resulting photograph encouraged a new art-form into the household and I’d regularly find strange photos on my camera phone. Lego man posing on table. Close up of Moshi Monster Magazine.  Bunny toy with red blanket draped behind like a cloak. Images that say so much about the things that excite and inspire them.

Like with Josef Sudek’s beautiful, almost otherworldly view of Prague, a photograph can contain so much personality and atmosphere. Stories too. They have the power to awake empathy and to change perception, Dorothea Lange’s images of people during the great depression a good example of this. I suppose the impact of the photograph shouldn’t surprise, considering how the trigger for so many memories can be held as a single snapshot in the mind. A visit to Florence- the corner of a Botticelli painting. The Great Gatsby- two eyes on a billboard. Lord of the Flies- a conch lying on a beach.

Recently, while researching for a book, I stumbled across an article from 1957 about two houses that had endured a series of trials. They were damaged by German bombers in 1941, floods in 54’ and then a fire in ’57 which a ‘Mr Daly’ claimed to have licked the back of his head as he escaped. The photograph above the article was of a smiling woman outside one of the unlucky terraced houses on Strandville Place. I was surprised to find it was my grandmother.  There was a time when getting a photograph in the newspaper was a big deal. I imagine a number of copies were purchased and shared. People would have stopped her on the street to discuss ‘the man from the Herald’.

I uploaded the article and it appeared on social media amid the selfies and the holiday snaps and photos of kittens dressed in little waistcoats and hats. The responses showed a further aspect to the photograph, how it has the power to ignite dialogue and memories. My cousin mentioned how our Grandfather would speak of the bomb damage to the house, that he would claim to have caught one of the bombs as it fell from the sky. She said she believed him for years. And isn’t that such a lovely snapshot for a child to have in their head. Granda running down the North Strand Road. Sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
A great big bomb in his arms.
And a huge grin on his face.

See you on the other side, Dad