Vanishing Ireland & Dorothea Lange's Ireland

(Originally in Colonialism/Nationalism journal)

Over the last two years I have kept noticing different versions of this series of Vanishing Ireland books in shops around the country. It is a collection of books (beginning in 2001) which contain portraits and interviews which in their words "capture and preserve the stories of older generations and to show what life was like in Ireland in times past". What first interested me about it was how seemingly popular and prominent it was in the stores that I saw it in. Its unusual to a book of mainly photographs being such a mainstream commodity.

Although the portraits are mostly well made the book itself and the context they are placed are very twee and seem to pander to a sense of what is almost a caricature of Irishness. The semantics of the book, using words like "vanishing, remembering and past" put a temporal distance between the viewer and the subject. No matter what the intention of the work, the viewer is placed in an elevated position above the people who are being represented. There is a distinct lack of any modernity in the photographs, which somehow has come to be a signifier for distinct Irishness. Even on the recent trip to Berlin, we passed an "authentic Irish shop" which from the window appeared to exclusive sell tweed clothing. It is this inflated sense of Irishness which I think the book draws on.

Although not on the same level as the book "Dorothea Lange's Ireland, there are some interesting parallels to be drawn between the two. Dorothea Lange's photographs of Ireland, especially those which were used in Life magazine in 1955 put a similar temporal difference and sense of superiority of its subjects. The main separating factor between the two was the audience. The audience for Lange's photographs were predominantly an American/Irish-American one. When the first edition of her book sold out, the majority went to American. The reason for this was that people wanted to hold onto and relate back to some of their heritage. It is interesting, therefore, that Irish people would now be doing the same. Perhaps with the move into a more modern, homogenised and European Union-ified nation that people feel an increasing need to seek out Irishness in the same way ex-pat Americans did 50-60 years ago.