Gallery of Photography Ireland is delighted to present this special online In Conversation event to celebrate the launch of this beautiful new photography book by internationally renowned photographer Alen MacWeeney.
Alen MacWeeney 'My Dublin 1963//My Dubliners 2020'
Launch event details:
Thursday 9th December, 7pm online.
Curator, writer and art historian Dr Margarita Cappock from Dublin City Arts Office will chair an In Conversation with photographer Alen MacWeeney and artist/collaborator Pesya Altman.
Broadcast live from our YouTube channel, GPI TV
Fish & Chips in Del Rio's Cafe
Gallery of Photography Ireland is delighted to be hosting an exclusive online event with photographer Alen MacWeeney to launch his book 'My Dublin 1963, My Dubliners 2020'.
“60 years after a photographer took these photographs in Dublin, the community replied”
In September 1962 Irish photographer Alen MacWeeney returned to Dublin from a year in New York, working for the acclaimed photographer Richard Avedon. Equipped with a 35mm Leica camera, he went onto the streets of the city to engage with life directly as he saw it. Almost 60 years later, during the pandemic lockdowns and isolation of 2020, that we all experienced, MacWeeney’s photographs of Dublin 1963 were shared by his partner, Pesya, with a group of online Dubliners.
The Night - Walkers
The result was a virtual explosion. An instantaneous torrent of observations, comments and opinions filled the screen. As more photographs were posted, the online community scrutinised every incidental detail. Responses bristled with Dublin humour. The people and locations that MacWeeney had captured were recognised and disputed. Discussions and recollections drew in multiple participants, the online exchanges eliciting wonder, incredulity, nostalgia, warmth – and sometimes anger. This previously unseen series of photographs had come to life again in the unexpected confinement of a pandemic to grace a multitude of new lives through a bond of shared interest and humanity.
Children Playing Around Shrine to Virgin Mary
Now all photographs in the series have been published with a selection of these online comments by the community in a book by Alen MacWeeney entitled, My Dublin 1963, My Dubliners 2020. The book is about the power of photography in creating a conversation that unites the community, and transports the viewer back to another life. It is local history. It is about life in a Dublin of the past being brought back into the present in 2020 by today’s Dubliners, “straight from the horse’s mouth”.
Youth next to a Peugeot
For MacWeeney, “Reading the reaction of Dubliners in lockdown to seeing the people or places they knew as children, – mothers and fathers, relations and friends, coming or going to work, playing in the streets, or on a date, waiting for the bus, or just being there as I was at the time, was electrifying; a pure joy to read their responses.”
Children by the Canal
Alen MacWeeney My Dublin 1963//My Dubliners 2020, published by The Lilliput Press €40
Book Details:
Printed by Verona Libri, Italy
89 B&W photographs printed in tritone
212 pages on GardaPat Kiara 135 gs
Signed Special Edition with 'Children by the Canal' print €120, is available exclusively at Gallery of Photography Ireland.
About the speakers:
Alen MacWeeney, is one of the world’s leading photographers. Born in Dublin in 1939, at sixteen years of age he worked as a press photographer for The Irish Times. A London editor from Vogue saw his work a few years later and said, if you photograph someone famous, I’ll get you a job at Vogue. Orson Wells, then performing in Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre agreed to his request to be photographed. This chance opportunity led him onto other theatre, portrait, and fashion assignments in Dublin for several years.
On moving to New York, he continued his professional career as an assistant to the American fashion photographer and portraitist Richard Avedon. This experience began his extensive career in commercial and editorial photography for such newspapers and magazines as Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. His photographs of Irish Travellers are internationally renowned. MacWeeney’s photographic archive was acquired by University College Cork.
https://www.alenmacweeney.com/bio and https://libguides.ucc.ie/alen_macweeney
Dr. Margarita Cappock is an art historian, curator and writer based in Dublin City Arts Office. She was formerly Head of Collections at the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin which she joined in 1999 as Project Manager of the Francis Bacon Studio and Archive, where she coordinated the documentation and reconstruction of Bacon's Reece Mews studio and its contents. She is the author of the book, Francis Bacon's Studio (Merrell Publishers, London and New York, 2005) and has written several articles on Francis Bacon and other Irish, British and American Artists for The Burlington Magazine, Irish Arts Review and several other academic journals and exhibition catalogues, nationally and internationally. She has lectured worldwide on Francis Bacon’s studio and acted as Curatorial advisor for exhibitions on Francis Bacon at the Hermitage, St. Petersburg; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Kunsthistorisches, Vienna; BOZAR, Brussels.
Alen's partner Artist Pesya Altman first started sharing his Dublin photographs during a covid lockdown which was the books germination, as Alen says of 'My Dublin//MyDubliners' it is 'the book my partner Pesya really created, though I get the credit',
https://www.pesyaaltmanart.com
