As part of our new Through the Lens lecture series, Luke Gibbons will explore the complex relationship between visual culture and Irish identity through photography. Drawing on a diverse range of works, Gibbons will address how photographs both reveal and obscure aspects of Irish life and history. He will discuss the ways photography has shaped and reflected national identity, from the Romantic images of Ireland’s rugged landscapes to the post-Famine depictions of poverty and emigration. Gibbons will also examine the impact of political turmoil, such as the Troubles, on visual culture, highlighting how photography captures the unseen—loss, absence, and resistance. Through an exploration of both historical and contemporary Irish photography, Gibbons will invite the audience to consider how images of Ireland provoke deeper understandings of time, place, and memory.

Speaker Biography
Luke Gibbons is Emeritus Professor of Irish Literary and Cultural Studies at the School of English, Drama and Media Studies, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and formerly taught at the University of Notre Dame, USA, and Dublin City University. He has published widely on Irish culture, film, literature, and the visual arts, as well as on aesthetics and politics. He was a member of the Board of Trustees at Photo Museum Ireland 2018-24. His many publications include Transformations in Irish Culture (1996), Edmund Burke and Ireland: Aesthetics, Politics and the Colonial Sublime (2003), Gaelic Gothic: Race, Colonization, and Irish Culture (2006), and Joyce’s Ghosts: Ireland, Modernism and Memory (2015).