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.

THE FOGGY DEW

Academy House (RHA HQ) in Abbey St. on fire during the Rising
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I actually went to the exhibition to see this picture and ask if I could use it in a talk I'm giving on Gordon Brewster. The picture depicts the blazing Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) building in Abbey Street in 1916 during the Rising. The annual exhibition was on at the time and all the exhibits were lost in the blaze.

“Everything was destroyed. The studios; the Academy collection; all the records; everything they’d built up from 1823 and before that — including an entire suite of Goya’s ‘Disasters of War’ from when the French invaded Spain. The Keeper Joseph Malachy Kavanagh ran out of the building saving the charter, some account books and the president’s medal.”

Mick O'Dea, artist.

The very discerning viewer may notice "two prints from Goya's Disasters of War floating in the lower right hand side, one of the prints depicts a Spanish guerrilla being executed by the French, all lost in the fire."

Gordon Brewster's exhibits at the RHA

Two of the exhibits destroyed were by Gordon Brewster, graduate of the Metropolitan School of Art (later to become NCAD), chief cartoonist with Independent Newspapers and subsequently in charge of the art department of the newspaper.

The British Hun (Britannia) and the gunship Helga

However, I soon came under the spell of the exhibition as a whole. The above is a depiction of the general onslaught by the British forces on the city centre during the Rising. As well as the cardboard sculpture of the British Hun, it includes a representation of the gunboat Helga, which bombarded the centre, and bodies all over the place.

A very British Hun

I must say the Hun really got to me. Shades of Darth Vader, were it not for the clear visual gender identification.

Dominatrix Britannia

Maybe it just has something to do with women in uniform. Anyway, best to get back onto neutral ground and let the song speak for itself: "While Britannia's Huns, with their long range guns sailed out o'er the foggy dew".

A riderless horse flees from the GPO

Not forgetting the GPO and the general slaughter on the streets of Dublin.

The fall of Nelson in 1966

Despite an intensive bombardment of O'Connell St., Admiral Nelson, on his high perch, was one of the three major monuments which escaped virtually unscathed. It took another fifty years to unseat him, so to speak. So while the exhibition is about 1916 it also takes in the "act of war" perpetrated in the same location on the 50th anniversary of the Rising. And that blow completed three strikes against the buildings of Francis Johnston in the city centre: 1916 - GPO & RHA HQ; and 1966 - Nelson.

Daniel O'Connell with his perennial companion

I was going to say that Daniel O'Connell must have looked on all of this with amusement but, given how he backed down on Clontarf, he must really have been appalled.

General view of the exhibition

This room of the exhibition, consists of four very large canvases and a series of cardboard sculptures by Mick O'Dea, currently President of the RHA. The ensemble is a provocative piece of work, particularly when you take into account the controversy surrounding the period and its fleshing out with evidence based historical research since the naïve triumphalism of the fiftieth anniversary in 1966.

A panel of 18 of the 20 prtraits in the exhibition
of those directly involved in the Rising

An equally important element of the exhibition, and for some the most important part given Mick's reputation as a portrait painter, is a vast panel of portraits which you encounter on your way to the room described above. These include the 1916 leaders but also others directly involved in the Rising.

You can read an excellent in depth interview with Mick by Joe Ó Muircheartaigh here and check out the 1916 room in Coláiste Mhuire referred to in that interview here.

You can hear Mick's interview with Seán Rocks on the RTÉ Radio 1 ARENA programme here and check out Mick's own website here. I've blogged the catalogue here

Todays Academy House in Ely Place

The current exhibition, in Gallery 1, which ends on 21 February, will be followed, on 22 March, by one in the Foyer about the events which took place at Academy House in 1916 and the subsequent history of the annual exhibition and RHA premises.