The 10th iteration of the PhotoIreland Festival celebrates ten years of history, art, innovation, critique, and photography in Ireland and beyond. Launching our first festival in July 2010 in the Meeting House Square of Temple Bar, the original aim of the event was to provide an inclusive space for individual artists and organizations to celebrate Photography as a discipline and learn from one another. Over the years, this exigence has remained the same—but grown, snowballed, to encompass more as the very medium of Photography evolves and adapts to encompass new meaning. Today, the practice of photography is one that promotes visual storytelling and cries out for a public visual literacy. It is persuasive, argumentative, subversive, and embedded into our digital lives in all the visual media we encounter on a daily basis. The annual festival is not only a celebration, but a sort of grounding, a discussion of research methods, a reminder to stay critical: to create, manipulate, discuss, respond to, feel, strive for excellence in, search, and innovate within visual mediums.
We invite you to tour the digital archive of this festival, a mere glimpse into all the programming that took place in 2019 and an abridged anthology of the work of PhotoIreland within the last decade. Due to the sheer size of this festival, for more detailed information on specific exhibits, events, and more, we highly encourage you to examine the programme site hyperlinked at the bottom of this page.
Key Dates, Events and Locations: To mark our anniversary, this iteration of the festival spans three months, providing programming May-July.
- May 2nd: Festival Launch
- Overall Festival Dates: May 1st- July 31st, 2019
- Primary Locations: The Library Project, Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, Rathfarnham Castle, and Instituto Cervantes
- Other locations for events, exhibitions, and FIE affiliated festival activities: Hang Tough Fine Art Printing & Framing, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Italian Institute of Culture, National Photographic Archive, Pallas Projects/Studios, Project Arts Centre, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, The Copper House Gallery, The Glucksman, The LAB, A4 Sounds, Ballina Quay, Dublin City Council, Dun Laoghaire Institute Of Art Design + Technology, Gallery of Photography, Griffith College, Irish Architectural Archive, Limerick School of Art and Design, Offaly County Council, SO Fine Art Editions, The Darkroom, The Workman’s Club, Pearse Street Library, and CHQ Dublin
The Festival
The nature of the PhotoIreland Festival is defined by its plasticity, not its rigidity. Meaning, the format of the festival adapts and changes yearly in by its inclusions and in its nature. Within the last decade, the festival has expanded to collaborate with other EU festivals and art organizations. Our team has worked tirelessly to ensure this festival remains annual, as the ethos of the event is to celebrate and retain a spotlight on Ireland’s talents, promoting locally and internationally through its programme and its partnerships, the work of artists based on the island. The work about staff and volunteers focuses on exhibiting opportunities (publication/educational/developmental) geared specifically to emerging and mid-career artists. The demand for continuity in these opportunities is something we like to address head on, working to support artists and provide them a space to share and grow.
This festival also marks the launch of The Museum Of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, at The Printworks Dublin Castle, a research project that investigates what a museum of contemporary photography should be like in Ireland today. A pop-up, this space is utilized to host main programming events for the festival in July.
Ranging in themes from poetry on making, memory, voting, queer spaces, needs/wants, the anthropocene, wandering, anxiety, and so much more—this festival is a revelry of the artistic and political potential of photography.
Main Exhibitions
- “The People of the Mud” Luis Alberto Rodriguez: an examination of three aspects of Irish tradition: hurling, Irish dancing, and farming
- “The Invention of Memory”: a discourse between the artists’ works, exploring different types of memories – national, personal, familial, landscape, gender – and inviting the viewer to consider the formation of identity through these.
- “New Irish Works” : a triennial project run by PhotoIreland Foundation to represent and promote the growing diversity of contemporary photographic practices in Ireland.
- “The Mountain” Nadim Asfar: an engagement with Lebanese landscape while setting the ground for a contemporary encounter with a de-nationalised landscape
- “Parallel Platform Exhibition, thing, aura, metadata. A poem on making”: an attempt to examine photography, focusing on its materiality and the process behind: poetics and politics of image making.
- Kassel Dummy Award Showcase, by Fotobookfestival: The dummy competition for the best unpublished photo book mock-up of the year. The award is open to international photographers. Fifty books are selected for the shortlist and exhibited.
- Photobook Week Aarhus Dummy Award Showcase: This is an international competition for the best unpublished photo book mockups of the year.
- Book and Magazine Fair: The Book & Magazine Fair will showcase a selection of publications from the PhotoIreland Foundation Collection that represents this search for creative independence.
- “The New Colonists and Ascension” Monica Alcazar-Duarte: work that encourages us to look to the far future with eyes wide open, as there is an imperative need to resolve current legal loopholes regarding space exploration for it to proceed in a peaceful and balanced way.
Featured Exhibitions
- “From Ballots to Bullets”
- “The Past is a Foreign Country”
- “A Vague Anxiety”
- “A Modern Eye: Helen Hooker O’Malley”
- “The Queeratorial”
- “The Parted Veil”
- “Tokyo International Photography Competition”
- “Pilvi Takala”
- “David Thomas Smith, Arecibo”
- “Fix”
Open Programme
The annual Open Programme offered artists, photographers, curators, and organizations the opportunity to put forward events and join the festival celebrations. Without any requirement to fit any theme, it was a chance to discover and showcase a wide variety of practices developing in Ireland.
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- “36 Views of Croghan Hill” Veronica Nicholson, “Indomitable,” Paul Kelly, “Capture,” “Diversity of Four,” “The Past is a Foreign Country,” “Threads,” “INSIDE, OUT,” “LSAD Graduate Show,” “Labourer’s Cottages,” “Photo 2019,” “St. Kevin’s College Graduate Exhibition,” “TU Dublin Graduate Exhibition,” “After the Landscape,” “INSIDE, OUT,” “Threads,” “IMAGO,” “Griffith College Dublin Graduate Show,” “Wanderings,” “Sinead Curran, Spruce,” “The Bridge,” and “Inverse,” Mella Travers.
Educational Programming and Events
2019’s engaging talks, curatorial and artists tours, and many other events
- Photobook Launch: Sarah Pannell, Tabriz to Shiraz
- Documenting the Everyday, with Sarah Pannell
- Photography for Non-Human Entities, with Alan Butler
- Reading Photographs: An Introduction, with Michelle Dunn Marsh
- Visualising Power, with Lewis Bush
- Open Source Research Methods, with Lewis Bush
- Blow Photo, Fuse.
- How to be an Ethically Literate Photographer, with The Photography Ethics Centre
- Performing the Posthuman Subject in Photography
- Anita Groener and Owen Boss In Conversation
- From the Past to the Present but…to the Future?? with The Stairlings Collective
- Wikimedia Edit-a-thon
- Practice & Parenthood
- Magic Insta Material: A Workshop on Selfies and Portraits (for general audiences)
- Triple T&G Photobook Launch: Steven Nestor, Colin Abbott, Brad Rimmer
- Symposium: Photography and the Museum
- thing, aura, metadata Artists Tour
- Performance Lecture by Cihad Caner
- Nadim Asfar Artist Talk
- David Thomas Smith, Arecibo
- Look at Italy!
- “Foul, Filthy, Stinking Muck”
Overview
PhotoIreland Festival 2019
Celebrating 10 years advancing Photography in Ireland
2019.photoireland.org
Main Exhibitions
The People of the Mud, The Library Project, 3 May-25 August
The Invention of Memory, Rathfarnham Castle,
New Irish Works, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, 5-28 July
The Invention of Memory, Rathfarnham Castle, 5-30 May
Nadim Asfar, The Mountain, 5-28 July
Parallel Platform Exhibition:thing, aura, metadata. A poem on making, 5-28 July
Kassel Dummy Award Showcase, by Fotobookfestival, 5-28 July
Photobook Week Aarhus Dummy Award Showcase, 5-28 July
Book and Magazine Fair, 5-28 July
Monica Alcazar-Duarte, The New Colonists and Ascension, 12 July-16 August
Featured Exhibitions
From Ballots to Bullets, National Photographic Archives, until 26 May
The Past is a Foreign Country, The LAB Gallery, 24 May-28 July
A Vague Anxiety, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 12 April-18 August
A Modern Eye: Helen Hooker O’Malley, National Photographic Archives, 20 June-November
The Queeratorial, Pallas Projects/Studios, 21 June-6 July
The Parted Veil, The Glucksman, Co. Cork, 12 April-30 June
Tokyo International Photography Competition, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, 5-28 July
Pilvi Takala, Temple Bar Gallery+Studios, 19 July-7 September
David Thomas Smith, Arecibo, The Copper House Gallery, 6-13 July
Fix, Hang Tough Gallery, 21 July-3 August
Open Programme
36 Views of Croghan Hill, Veronica Nicholson, Áras an Chontae, Co. Offaly, 1-31 May
Indomitable, Paul Kelly, Dublin City Council, 3-16 May
Capture, SO Fine Art Editions, 10 May-6 June
Diversity of Four, The Darkroom, 17-25 May
Nadim Asfar, The Mountain, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland,
Fotobookfestival Kassel Dummy Award, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland
Photobook Week Aarhus Dummy Award, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland
The Past is a Foreign Country, The LAB Gallery
Threads, The Darkroom
INSIDE, OUT, The Workman’s, 1-13 June
LSAD Graduate Show, Limerick School of Art and Design, Co. Limerick
Labourer’s Cottages, Irish Architectural Archive, 26 June-31 July
Photo 2019, Dublin Camera Club, Running 4 June-28 June at Dublin City Library,1-12 July at The CHQ Dublin
St. Kevin’s College Graduate Exhibition, A4 Sounds, 17-20 May
TU Dublin Graduate Exhibition, Gallery of Photography, 1-12 June
After the Landscape, The Library Project, 31 May-2 June
INSIDE, OUT, The Vintage Room, The Workman’s, 1-13 June
Threads, The Darkroom, 31 May – 9 June
IMAGO, Institute of Art, Design + Technology, Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, 31 May-8 June
Griffith College Dublin Graduate Show, Griffith College Dublin, 7-12 June
Wanderings, The Darkroom, 14-23 June
Sinead Curran, Spruce, The Darkroom, 18 July
The Bridge, Ballina Quay, Ballina/Killaloe, Co. Tipperary, 19-31 July
Mella Travers, Inverse, The Darkroom, 11-20 October
Events
Photobook Launch:Sarah Pannell, Tabriz to Shiraz, 23 May
Documenting the Everyday, with Sarah Pannell, The Library Project, 24 May
Photography for Non-Human Entities, with Alan Butler, The Library Project, 4, 11, 19 and 25 May
Reading Photographs: An Introduction, with Michelle Dunn Marsh, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Studio 12, 5-9 Temple Bar, Dublin 2, 28 May
Visualising Power, with Lewis Bush, The Library Project, 7 June
Open Source Research Methods, with Lewis Bush, The Library Project, 8 June
Blow Photo, Fuse, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, Dublin, 13 July
How to be an Ethically Literate Photographer, with The Photography Ethics Centre, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, 14 July
Performing the Posthuman Subject in Photography, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, 13 July
Anita Groener and Owen Boss In Conversation, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, 25 July
From the Past to the Present but…to the Future?? with The Stairlings Collective, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, 20-21 July
Wikimedia Edit-a-thon, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, 16 July
Practice & Parenthood, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, 20 July
Magic Insta Material: A Workshop on Selfies and Portraits (for general audiences), with Anna Ehrenstein, Rathfarnham Castle, 21 July
Triple T&G Photobook Launch: Steven Nestor, Colin Abbott, Brad Rimmer, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, 13 July
Symposium: Photography and the Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, 5th July
thing, aura, metadata Artists Tour, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, 5th July
Performance Lecture by Cihad Caner, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, 5th July
Nadim Asfar Artist Talk, The Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, 5th July
David Thomas Smith, Arecibo, The Copper House Gallery, 5th July
Look at Italy!, Italian Institute of Culture, 11 Fitzwilliam Square East, Dublin 2, 6 June
“Foul, Filthy, Stinking Muck”, Project Arts Centre, 39 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, 4 June
Supported by
Creative Europe
Parallel
Futures
Arts Council of Ireland
Dublin City Council
OPW
Alliance Française
Ambassade de France à Dublin
Istituto Italiano di Cultura
Instituto Cervantes
Inspirational Arts
Hang Tough
British Journal of Photography
foam
GUP
RTE
Contributors
Curators: CURATORIAL TEAM
Ángel Luis González – Director & Curator
Julia Gelezova – General Manager
Moritz Neumüller – Curatorial Advisor
Daria Danilchenko – Museum Visitor Services
Claudi Nir – Project Manager Book Fair
Artists: Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Nadim Asfar, Cihad Caner, Dries Lips, Jessica Wolfelsperger, Monica Alcazar-Duarte, Benedetta Casagrande and Leonardo Falascone, Lucie Khakhoutian, Clare Lyons, Yvette Monahan, Aisling McCoy, Cian Burke, Dorje de Burgh, George Voronov, Jamin Keogh, Phelim Hoey, Robert Ellis, Roisin White, Sarah Flynn, Zoe Hamill, and Steven Nestor.
Plus the minds of Alan Butler, Susan Bright, Anna Ehrenstein, Alison Nordstrom, Lewis Bush, Hester Keijser, Seda Yildiz, Eleonore Challine, Marco de Mutiis.
Team
CURATORIAL TEAM
Ángel Luis González – Director & Curator
Julia Gelezova – General Manager
Moritz Neumüller – Curatorial Advisor
Daria Danilchenko – Museum Visitor Services
Claudi Nir – Project Manager Book Fair
PRODUCTION TEAM
Frank Brennan – Production Manager
Jamin Keogh – Production Assistant
Seán Daly – Production Assistant
VOLUNTEERS
Miguel Asuero García, Youri Alen, Rui Dias, Mark Flanagan, Ben Hutchinson, Margot Kenny, Carolina Hernandez de Toledo, Clare Lyons, Becky O’Sullivan, Florina Petruneac, Helena Roig, Max Rooney, Eoghan Scally, Sophie Tonge.
Press
- Achievements:
- Celebrating 10 years of the PhotoIreland Festival.
- Launch of the project “Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland” at The Printworks, Dublin Castle.
- Another Man Mag
- i-d Vice
- PhMuseum
- Visual Artists’ News Sheet | Special Issue: September – October 2019
- 310 / THE RPS JOURNAL / MAY 2019 / VOL 159
- totallydublin.ie/more/a-new-museum-broadens-photography-in-ireland/
- totallydublin.ie/arts-culture/arts-culture-features/in-the-frame-the-people-of-the-mud-luis-alberto-rodriguez/
- totallydublin.ie/arts-culture/new-irish-works-showcased-at-the-museum-of-contemporary-photography/
Locations
Main Exhibitions
The Library Project
Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland
Rathfarnham Castle
Instituto Cervantes
Featured Exhibitions & Events
Hang Tough Fine Art Printing & Framing
Irish Museum of Modern Art
Italian Institute of Culture
National Photographic Archive
Pallas Projects/Studios
Project Arts Centre
Temple Bar Gallery & Studios
The Copper House Gallery
The Glucksman
Open Programme
The LAB
A4 Sounds
Ballina Quay
Dublin City Council
Dun Laoghaire Institute Of Art Design + Technology
Gallery of Photography
Griffith College
Irish Architectural Archive
Limerick School of Art and Design
Offaly County Council
SO Fine Art Editions
The Darkroom
The Workman’s Club
Pearse Street Library
CHQ Dublin
Introduction
From May to July, we celebrated 10 years of a festival that has been actively looking at what we were missing in Ireland, and what the world was missing of Ireland.
Exhibitions featuring works by Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Nadim Asfar, Cihad Caner, Dries Lips, Jessica Wolfelsperger, Monica Alcazar-Duarte, Benedetta Casagrande and Leonardo Falascone, Lucie Khakhoutian, Clare Lyons, Yvette Monahan, Aisling McCoy, Cian Burke, Dorje de Burgh, George Voronov, Jamin Keogh, Phelim Hoey, Robert Ellis, Roisin White, Sarah Flynn, Zoe Hamill, and Steven Nestor. Plus the minds of Alan Butler, Susan Bright, Anna Ehrenstein, Alison Nordstrom, Lewis Bush, Hester Keijser, Seda Yildiz, Eleonore Challine, Marco de Mutiis, Photography/Archives/Ireland, and more!
The Museum Of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, at The Printworks Dublin Castle, with the kind support of OPW; a temporary space for an on-going research project that we started this year.
It is 10 years since PhotoIreland Festival launched its first edition at the Meeting House Square in Temple Bar, in July 2010. It was the effort of a large group of individuals and organisations presented as vibrant, friendly, all-inclusive: a festival for all to enjoy. The motto remains the same today, and so does the intention to learn and grow from that first edition, not necessarily in size, in number of shows, or geographically, but instead to grow in our understanding of the practice, of the place where it sits in the context of the Arts in Ireland, and of all the circumstances that affect it. It is the ethos of PhotoIreland Festival to celebrate Photography as a discipline, even when it has become so broad and abstract that its name is of little use anymore to define it. But while we find a better word, visual storytelling, visual literacy, it is as relevant as ever in our hyperconnected society. based research methods, testing new ways of working. It is important to remain critical, not merely accepting and repeating what such an organisation is meant to do or what is expected from us, and we must keep searching for best practice from other great organisations and individuals, striving for excellence Who could have thought that a decade later, Ireland would enjoy a festival with such strong European connections, being the Irish member of two EU co-funded platforms of Photography, Parallel and Futures, for example, and actively collaborating with other European festivals and Arts organisations to provide great content to audiences like you.
There is a lot of people that have worked tirelessly together, contributing over the years to the success of this organisation. To each and every one of them, from the volunteers to the staff, the artists, curators and the Ireland’s International Festival of Photography & Image Culture celebrates 10 years It is also the ethos of this festival to support Ireland’s talents, promoting locally and internationally through its programme and its partnerships, the work of artists based on the island. We endeavour to offer them ways to progress in their careers, within and outside Ireland, with publishing and exhibiting opportunities alongside educational and developmental ones, geared specifically to emerging and mid-career artists. Doing so, we ensure that a healthy ecosystem of practices is not silenced by lack of opportunities. For this reason, this is not a festival that can merely appear every two or three years, with fireworks and flashy highlights. This is a hard working festival that wants to make a difference, one that is needed in Ireland, and to do that demands continuity. Our work over the last ten years has undoubtedly impacted positively on the discipline, and we want to keep working in that direction. As always, we will continue with our practice often overlooked Art administrators, to the sponsors, grant aiders and supporters, to all of them we owe our deepest gratitude. This year, we programme not one but three months of events, from May to the end of July, to celebrate them as we celebrate this anniversary. To make it even more special, as this year we started a research project that investigates what a museum of contemporary photography should be like in Ireland today, we are offering a space modestly named the Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland. This pop-up space will open at The Printworks, in Dublin Castle, thanks to the Office of Public Works, and it will host the main activities during July.
