My 1916

1916 Exhibition - Nightshot of Pearse St. Library
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I didn't set out to photograph 1916 in 2016 so all of these photos are opportunistic - a moment observed, a flash of inspiration, and CLICK.

When Michael Edwards set Remembering 1916 as the theme for this year's photo competition I wondered if I might have anything to enter. In fact an early version of the title (2016 remembering 1916) would have meant that any entry would have to have been taken in 2016. So I was scratching my head around the middle of the year and eventually identified the five shots below as being suitable. As it happens, they were all taken within that year and I ended up putting them in for the competition.

As you are not supposeed to put any writing on the picture mounts they are all anonymous as far as the adjudicator is concerned and the photo has to speak for itself.

So I thought I'd take the opportunity, now that the competition is over, to fill in a little of the background to the pictures.

Seomra 1916 - Coláiste Mhuire

This is the room in Parnell Square where nationalist leaders came together in September 1914 and decided to have a Rising. It was a broad decision in principle and the details were sketched in later over the course of the following year. The room was in what was then the headquarters of Conradh na Gaeilge, and it was both the library and the office of the Secretary General, Seán T Ó Ceallaigh.

The backstory is here.

The Foggy Dew - RHA

I am not an arty person and had never been inside the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). But I read in the Irish Times in January 2016 that there was a painting on show there of the RHA's old premises in Abbey Street on fire during the Rising.

I have an interest in the artist, Gordon Brewster, who lost two paintings in that fire and I got permission from Mick O'Dea, President of the RHA and the artist concerned, to go in and photograph the painting for a talk I was giving on Brewster.

Well, when I got in the door and saw the exhibition I was blown away.

The rest of the story is here.

Tarting Up - The Padraig Pearse Pub

I was heading into Pearse St. library one day when I saw the Padraig Pearse pub across the road in the course of being tarted up for the centenary year (better late than never). They were about three quarters of the way through the signage with one of Pearse's heads (the good side) still sitting on the ground waiting for a lift.

I wonder what Pearse would have thought of a pub being named after him just down the road from where he lived. Certainly in the few years run up to the Rising he was loudly proclaiming his denial of some of the pleasures of life, as here.

Two Volunteers - GPO

This pair caught my fancy passing the GPO one day. Two volunteers, one military, one social, the latter mopping up some of the mess not resolved since the Rising.

Who'd have thought the modern Irish State, a whole century on, would need soup kitchens for its poor and disinherited. Some shattered dream.

The GPO was restored but Irish society is still cracked down the middle and the soupers are still with us.

Clery's - O'Connell St.

Since I retired and started taking more photos around the city I'm inclined to look up more than I used to and it's amazing what you see sometimes.

On this occasion the flithered flag flying over Clery's really gave me a jolt. There is both cheek and negligence here, and that right across the road from the iconic GPO. Indeed, in its day Clery's was an icon in itself.

But this vista is a searing comment on what has not been achieved by the Rising or the State which followed it, when staff could be turfed out into the street while the moneybags scuttled off with pocketfulls of dosh gained from a disgraceful financial wheeze.

The tattered tricolour says it all.

So there you have it. Much to my surprise all five of the photos made it into the competition final in the individual (non photo club) category and Seomra 1916 came through as the overall category winner.

Thrilled I am.

Moore Street 1969

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While searching for something else, I came across these five colour slides taken of Moore Street in June 1969.

The first two are taken from Radio Éireann on the third floor of the GPO, while the other three are clearly at closer quarters at ground level.

The quality is not great but given that it's forty years ago they might be of interest. This probably applies in particular to the first one which includes the 1916 buildings

2RN

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John Behan's sculpture, Na Guthanna, stands in the grounds of RTÉ in Montrose. It was unveiled in 2001 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the inauguration of the Irish national radio service then known as 2RN.

The service started in Little Denmark St. (off Henry St.), coincidentally the street where I bought the parts for my first, and only, crystal set (which never worked).

In 1928 the service moved to the GPO from where it continued to broadcast until its move to the Radio Centre in Montrose in 1973. I have fond memories of the many hours I spent in the small cubicles in the GPO sitting in on some of Brian Reynolds's programmes and of the radio people I met in the corridors.

I was out in the Radio Centre last week which is when I took the photo above. I was recording two small WWI inserts for the History Programme on my uncle John and Richard Brewster, both of whom died on the Somme. I also did a short piece on Edward Ball, who was born in the same house as myself, and who, some years before my own birth, put a hatchet in his mother's head.

I had no idea what the thing was until I got home and checked it out.

Incidentally, the name 2RN ceased to apply to the service from 1933, but I was interested to see that it is now back (in lower case) as the name of the company which provides transmission services to the various RTÉ radio stations and Today FM and also site hosting for mobile telephone operators, the emergency services, wireless broadband and other private mobile communications service providers.

Dublin

Brendan Teeling
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The occasion was the launching of the book Dublin - The Making of a Capital City by David Dickson, Professor of Modern History at TCD. The book is a magnum opus and draws heavily on the work of those who went before. It covers a thousand years of the Capital's history, from the Viking era to the Spire, of which more later.

The master of ceremonies was Deputy City Librarian, Brendan Teeling, last seen on my website at Raheny library's fortieth anniversary celebration.

He teed it up nicely for Dermot Lacey who was launching the book on behalf of the Lord Mayor.

Dermot Lacey

Dermot is a member of Dublin City Council and a himself former Lord Mayor. Not only does he have a great love for Dublin city, but, unlike many another launcher, he had actually read the book he was launching, all 700 pages of it.

In the course of an erudite and humorous speech, he called on the Bank of Ireland to return its building on College Green to the State for use as a museum of Dublin. It is now bailout call in time. Not only was Dublin, until today, lacking this sort of overview survey history, it still lacks a proper museum of Dublin. It was made clear that this was not meant as any reflection on the wonderful Little Museum of Dublin on St. Stephen's Green.

Dermot also confessed to having mixed feelings about the Spire. He said that when asked what he thought of it he would throw the question back at the questioner. If they didn't like it he would tell them he voted against it at the time. If they did like it he would tell them that, as Lord Mayor, he inaugurated it.

Mary Daly

Mary Daly, Professor of History at UCD and currently the first woman president of the Royal Irish Academy in its 229 year history, paid tribute to the book, the first to cover such a period in the Capital's history in such a scholarly and readable manner. She felt that only David Dickson could have produced such a work.

David Dickson

David Dickson made the point that the book could not have been produced without the access to sources provided by the digital age, and without the work that went before him on which he drew massively.

I note that he remarks, on page 562, regarding the Spire, that "Certainly its scale served to diminish the verticality of O'Connell Street". That gave me great encouragement as it is a point I have been making about both the Spire and its predecessor, the Pillar, for many a year. I can still remember being amazed at how majestic a building the GPO was revealed as in the immediate aftermath of the demolition of Nelson's Pillar in 1966, and how much wider O'Connell Street looked in its absence. It might have been a fitting gesture, in this 1916 centenary year, to have demolished the Spire, a monument to Celtic Tiger hubris and an insult to the leaders of the Rising, and to have restored the GPO to its rightful prominence. Those last bits are me talking and I have no idea whether they might be shared by David Dickson. Must ask him sometime.

The launch took place, appropriately enough, in the Dublin City Library and Archive in Pearse St. This venue has been developed over the years and is not only a research library, but it houses much of the City's archive and, in recent years, has acquired a fine lecture hall and exhibition space.

Needless to say, the speakers paid a handsome and well deserved tribute to what Dermot called "the two Marys", Máire Kennedy in charge on the library side and Mary Clarke on the archives. There's hardly a work of note relating to the city of Dublin, including the present book, which does not figure one or both of these generous scholars in the acknowledgements section.

Grunt

The year was 1965, the month July.

I was showing a French girl round the town and was at a bit of a loss for where to bring her, me not being a tourist myself. After Nelson's Pillar I decided on the Dáil. It was our national parliament, after all, and would be sure to impress.

We ended up in the visitors gallery just as the Taoiseach, Seán Lemass, was on the receiving end of a blast from the chamber's prime orator of the day, James Dillon TD, former leader of Fine Gael, the main opposition party.

Mr. Dillon: I said I expect nothing from a pig but a grunt.

I was mortified. This was not quite the impressive dignified debate I had expected.

And to add to my mortification, the French girl asks "What did he say?"

I think I mumbled something about him not agreeing with the Taoiseach, and there and then swore never to bring anyone near the place ever again.

Dillon had been leader of Fine Gael up to the general election on 7 April 1965. In fact I had been at his last big rally outside the GPO two days before the election. That must have been where I formed my exalted opinion of his fine oratory and no doubt it had influenced me into putting the Dáil on my itinerary.

And in case you think I'm spoofing, that's me and my friend Tom in the detail above.

God be with the days.