Man On The Bridge
The Gallery of Photography, Dublin
Again I found myself in the the Gallery of Photography marveling at its curators ability to produce exhibitions that are curious, deeply parochial and utterly fascinating, a quality referred to in the review of its Photo Album of Ireland exhibition.
This time it is the work of one photographer that is on show, and an extraordinarily prolific photographer he was. In his 50 year career, street photographer Arthur Fields took over 180,000 photographs of people passing his claimed spot on Dublin's O'Connell bridge.
Born in Dublin in 1901 into a Ukrainian Jewish family hat had fled persecution in 1895 his original business had been operating a small recording studio where people could record their own voice he later moved into photography after buying a box camera. His business had two distinct facets, owning a camera was rare and expensive, so people would seek out a street photographer to record an important event. The second facet was opportunism, Fields would pretend to photograph a target, snapping the real shot when they stopped to see what he was doing. He would then give them a ticket to collect their print from the nearby small studio operated by his wife who did all of the processing. In the course of his career he photographed a cross section of society, notable images being of Brendan Behan, Jack Doyle, Margaret Rutherford and the colourful Prince Monolulu who claimed to be the chief of a tribe in Abyssinia (image left).
This time it is the work of one photographer that is on show, and an extraordinarily prolific photographer he was. In his 50 year career, street photographer Arthur Fields took over 180,000 photographs of people passing his claimed spot on Dublin's O'Connell bridge.
Born in Dublin in 1901 into a Ukrainian Jewish family hat had fled persecution in 1895 his original business had been operating a small recording studio where people could record their own voice he later moved into photography after buying a box camera. His business had two distinct facets, owning a camera was rare and expensive, so people would seek out a street photographer to record an important event. The second facet was opportunism, Fields would pretend to photograph a target, snapping the real shot when they stopped to see what he was doing. He would then give them a ticket to collect their print from the nearby small studio operated by his wife who did all of the processing. In the course of his career he photographed a cross section of society, notable images being of Brendan Behan, Jack Doyle, Margaret Rutherford and the colourful Prince Monolulu who claimed to be the chief of a tribe in Abyssinia (image left).
The images on display (and there 3400 of them) have been collected as a result of public appeals to seek out old albums, family archives and even boxes in attics to find original images taken by Fields. These are being scanned and collated to form both this exhibition and a website/archive. In the exhibition the images form an immense collage installation that leads the viewer chronologically through a visual history of the 'ordinary' people of Ireland through 50 years.
The principal visual effect is to see the evolution of both fashion and also the way we present ourselves for the camera. The earlier images are more stiffly posed, showing a more formal approach to 'having your picture taken', which was still very much a novel business. By the later images (which were taken with a Polaroid instant camera (in colour), the poses are more relaxed, more playful and frequently more flamboyant. It's the sense of personal evolution within a society that started that 50 year period as an impoverished state, very much still finding it's identity in independence and very much subject to a political system dominated by the catholic church that really informs this exhibition. The gradual change from that state into the confident, vibrant and multicultural one it has become. In those years Dublin has evolved from from being a pretty dour place where enjoyment was largely alcohol based and generally hidden from view to a lively European capital city with a vibrant arts scene and a vibrancy, that although ethnically diverse, remains essentially Irish, you can still talk Hurling all night with the locals but you'll do it in a bar serving Italian beer alongside the Guinness and maybe a Lithuanian barman. This is an exhibition that was full of people laughing, looking for friends and relative, pointing out the oddness of some of the clothes and hair styles, it was a purely human exhibition about real people and real lives. Writing about this now I have to admit that there is a hint of sadness at the thought that this could not happen for our age. We take more photographs then ever but we seldom print, instead our archives are stored in an increasing mountain of obsolete, or soon to be technology. We have phones full of images that will gradually decay, we have cds and dvds that will do likewise, memory cards will become obsolete and our ability to read from them will diminish. While digital is a wonder in it's immediacy, there are undoubted questions about its longevity. For that reason, if nothing else, let's raise a fancy Italian beer to the remarkable Mr. Fields. The Gallery of Photography, Dublin..
Visit the Man on the Bridge website HERE |