PhotoIreland Festival 2017

Michal Iwanowski,
Clear of People.

Launch 6pm 4 May
Exhibition runs 5-31 May
at The Tara Building

“This is not an unusual story. There are no heroes in it, and there is nothing glorious about the events. We have seen it happen before. And we will see it happen again.”

Launch 7pm 4 May
Exhibition runs 5-31 May
at The Tara Building

Michal Iwanowski’s grandfather Tolek, and great uncle Wiktor, escaped from Soviet captivity and crossed over 2000 kilometres on their fugitive journey home in 1945.

70 years later, Iwanowski followed his grandfather’s footsteps and retraced the original journey for personal reasons. He Hoped that if he walked long enough, he might find him. To tell him it mattered. Hoping that the landscape might connect him to a time and people long gone.

What had started as a quiet tribute soon turned into a meditation on the strength of the human spirit. How do you carry on when your body gives up? What hope drives you blindly forward when your life is so obviously disposable?

Iwanowski has no interest in judging history, nor is he interested in glorifying his relatives. Instead he asks what happens to all those people who one day wake up to a war? Who mourns the lost ones? In his project he reveals a landscape crowded with ghosts, on their fugitive way home. East. West. North. South. There is no room in history books to fit all those people, though they find their place in Iwanowski’s.

Michal Iwanowski will launch his photobook Clear of People at the opening of the exhibition. The book was designed by Tom Mrazauskas, and published by Brave Books.

Steven Nestor,
Bellum et Pax.

Launch 6pm 4 May
Exhibition runs 5-31 May
at The Tara Building

Having formally studied History, German and Photography, Steven Nestor was discovering new visions of a time he thought had been fully debated and photographed. Yet here were images on sale as ‘Nachlass’, or estate: that what is literally left behind after death. They are what an individual had to say, and not what was said for them in their lifetime, and have in turn become a final testimony. However, clearly for these images, there was no immediate listener. Steven Nestor first started to come across these images while researching some years ago and was struck by the amount and quality of images for sale. What were once the preserve of the family album, are now global hacksilver, the descendants having lost interest. The witnesses’ visions are ours for as little as €2.00

What these images offer is a glimpse into fragments of life, under a totalitarian state at war and a nation under defeat and amnesia. They present us with a parallel narrative, a humanised history; a more nuanced and three-dimensional everyday vision removed from the state, the occupier and the artistry of the professional photographer. Enfranchised, we are offered a more relatable and even participatory role in a new proximity. Far removed from sanctioned visual narratives, cakes were baked, pets treasured, amorous jealousies forged and men in brown shirts dozed on trains. What did they dream about? After total defeat, the camera slowly returned to document everything and nothing.

Bellum et Pax is an attempt at universalising these recorded experiences, making them relatable and alive, away from plans for super races or economic wonders. They have been brought back out of the ether of web commoditisation for a re-existence as a new testimony.

This project was presented in book format to the Fotobookfestival Dummy Award 2015 in Kassel, Germany, being shortlisted by a jury that included Martin Parr, Markus Schaden, Katja Stuke and Erik Kessels amongst others. The dummy book will be available during the exhibition.

Robert Mc Cormack
& David Thomas Smith.

New Irish Works
Launch 6pm 6th May
Presentation runs 5-21 May
at The Library Project

This research based photographic project takes place in some of the wealthiest neighbourhoods surrounding Hyde Park, in the centre of London. These areas – Kensington, Mayfair, Belgravia, Chelsea, Holland Park and Notting Hill have the highest price tags for residential properties in the United Kingdom. In these spaces, financial elites who buy homes, are buying and inheriting a history and heritage that has been preserved. For some, this heritage meets the need to salvage an essential sense of self from the debris of modern estrangement.
In London today, there is a new class in which the financial constellation is dominant and which ultimately traces the roots of its new wealth to the deregulation of the financial markets. These new financial elites are the true heirs to the long held imperial legacy connected with London; their power has grown to a dimension that is truly imperial in the modern world. London is now the destination of choice for the world’s multi billionaires, it is virtually a tax haven, and a large proportion of these new residents now live in the areas McCormack chooses to photograph for Facade.
The images taken for this project, give a perception of the city as a site of mystery, they seek to reveal and construct a conceptual portrait of this wealthy portion of society. In doing so, they look at how space is formed and organised around them, as social identity is defined and asserted through difference.
Walter Benjamin’s writings throw up numerous metaphors for the ways we make sense of the city, he likened these to the work of digging and collecting. The city is understood as a material form that imbeds or encodes meaning; it surrenders these meanings in the form of fragments, clues, hints and echoes.
Utilising a form of psychogeography to overcome the processes of banalisation in the city, where experience of our surroundings becomes one drab monotony. This project aim, is to seek out spatial inequalities, using the spaces photographed as a vehicle to create a dialogue around social stratification and the complexities contained in urban life.

Residency: How to Flatten a Mountain 2017.

Starts 24 April at Cow House Studios
Launch 6pm 5th May
Exhibition runs 5-31 May
at Rathfarnham Castle

The 12 artists that will participate in How to Flatten a Mountain in 2017 are: Benedetta Casagrande, Kate Petley, Lauren Roeder, Mike Callaghan, Nathan Harris, Patricia Howard, Roisin White, Ruth Connolly, Val Patterson, Valéry Pelletier, Yinon Avior, and Zhao Qian.

Launch 5th May
Presentation runs 5-31 May
at Rathfarnham Castle

How to Flatten a Mountain is an exciting 12 days residency opportunity presented by PhotoIreland & Cow House Studios, and with the support of OPW, open to emerging and mid-career visual artists whose artistic practice in whole or part, makes use of digital and/or analogue photographic processes. The workshop facilitators in this edition will be Kim Haughton, Aisling McCoy, and Matthew Thompson, and the colophon of the residency is an exhibition of the works produced, presented during the PhotoIreland Festival at Rathfarnham Castle.

The aim of this residency is for participating artists to explore possibilities outside their core practice, work collaboratively and produce a cohesive exhibition of work to be presented at PhotoIreland Festival 2017. During the residency, participants will take an active part in a series of workshops led by guest facilitators and as a group will be sharing ideas, making work, processing, printing, editing, as needed, always working in collaboration. As an integral part of the residency, three artists based in Ireland will facilitate day-long workshops to provoke and animate different avenues for thought. Each facilitator brings to the residency new perspectives, challenges and opportunities for participants.

This twelve-day programme is comprised of three component parts; workshop facilitation, open studio time and the installation and opening of an exhibition in Dublin for PhotoIreland Festival 2017. The first five days of the programme will be comprised of a carefully selected series of workshops, readings and presentations designed to stimulate the creative process, facilitate collaboration, familiarise participants with the people and places of the locality and tease out shared curiosities and thematics. The following five days provide the necessary time and space to create new work. Following on from our initial workshops, the open studio time allows for participants to re-visit sites of interest, research, print and finalise work for presentation. The final two days will be spent in Dublin installing the exhibition, culminating in an opening on the final evening of the programme.

This residency opportunity is sure to result in the production of new work, introduce participants to a network of practitioners from a diversity of locations, provide a fantastic exhibition opportunity and open up new possibilities within each participant practice.

Junior, The Freedom Issue.

Launch 6pm 25 May
Exhibition runs 22-28 May
at The Library Project

Junior Magazine is a photographic journal providing a platform to emerging talent in Irish photography. They ‘seek to foster a new photographic community and shine a spotlight on outstanding work that is too often overlooked’. As with issue 1, the new issue will be launched at The Library Project under the title The Freedom Issue.

Within these pages, Junior dissects and discusses the many notions of freedom. From its definition to its antithesis, from the macro to the micro, and from the past into the future. Junior features projects from some of Ireland’s most promising photographers including Matt Glover, Therese Rafter, Andrew Rankin and Holly Foskett. A new feature will allow photographs to collide with the written word, as some of Ireland’s emerging literary talent responds to images from Clare Lyons, Daragh Soden and more. This new issue will be designed by Junior’s new team member Joshua Fanning.