Product Description

The first Irish photographs date from 1840. In the century that followed, Ireland was to know tragedy and triumph, bitter struggle and agonized compromise. Much of that experience, now remote, is brought to life here in images so powerful that they remind one of the miracle that photography once seemed.

Ireland in 1840 was a subject nation. Its predominantly Catholic, Gaelic-speaking people were ruled from Westminster by a parliament that was largely Protestant, British, and drawn from a narrow land-owning elite. In the 1840s, photography in Ireland was the genteel hobby of the leisured Anglo-Irish landed class. The well-to-do subjects of the daguerrotype portraits of the 1840s peer with bemused expressions toward the mysterious contraption in front of them. It is a shock to realize that many such images were taken as the Irish starved: between 1846 and 1851, over a million poor people died in the Great Famine, while an even greater number emigrated.

In the following decades, Irish political life was dominated by the struggle for land rights, for Home Rule, and finally for independence. As that story unfolds in this enthralling visual history, we encounter inspirational leaders and impatient rebels, and their campaigns of persuasion and violence. We see too the injustices that inspired them, above all the mass eviction of destitute peasants from their homes and lands. And we see how the march of Irish nationalism was thwarted not only by British resistance but also by militant Unionism—the equally passionate desire of Ulster Protestants to remain part of the United Kingdom.

Yet these images do more than tell a gripping political story. They give an insight into a people, a landscape, and a lost way of life. They capture the hard labor of rural survival: cutting peat for fuel, gathering seaweed, fishing, and tilling the soil, against the magnificence of the often-harsh Irish landscape. And they show the grandeur, elegance, and complacency of life in the Big House, home and symbol of the doomed Anglo-Irish elite. 271 photographs in color and duotone.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1264782 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The history of Ireland, at least from the advent of photography to the start of WWII, is solemnly rendered here by Sexton, a photo archivist. The book begins with harrowing images from the dawn of photography in the 1840s, which also happened to be the start of the potato famine in Ireland. Two categories of people often overlooked in early photography, the poor and women, are very much in evidence here, as they bore the brunt of suffering in the Irish countryside. The text, by historian Kinealy (This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52), offers a general summary of the living conditions and political situation in Ireland up through the 1930s. The photos are abundant in number (271 b&w and sepia prints) and numbing in overall effect; the text is standard analysis. Together, however, the two merge into an eloquent portrait of a long century of struggle in what was one of Europe's poorest countries. Yet there's more than hardship here, including a portrait of James Joyce, thriving turn-of-the-century markets, and a handsome shop (with "shopgirls") in the Curragh, County Kildare.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Here is a treasure: an assemblage of photographs from the most tragic hundred years in Ireland's history, from 1839, when the first Irish photographs were taken--just months after Daguerre invented the process--through the destitute years of the Great Hunger's aftermath (not surprisingly, there are no photographs of that disaster), to the revolution that made Ireland a modern, self-governing nation. The photographs, including those of such little-known women artists as Christine Chichester and Louisa Warenne, are haunting icons of grand wealth and grinding poverty, of war and ordinary life. As with many photographs from the time when the camera was still a somewhat threatening novelty, the most haunting images are the faces of the people who stare straight at the viewer across the pained decades. An excellent interpretive text provides context for these unforgettable pictures. Patricia Monaghan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
An elegant portrait of a long century of struggle in what was one of Europe's poorest countries. -- Publishers Weekly, 11 November 2002

An incredible compendium of black-and-white period photographs showcasing Irish individuals, Irish culture, and Irish history....very highly recommended. -- Bookwatch, October 2002

Here is a treasure. -- Booklist, Patricia Monaghan, December, 2002

The value of The Irish is in how it fulfills the last word, as history and photography infiltrate each other. -- Florida Newspaper, 11 December 2002

The value of [this book] is in how it fulfills the word ["photohistory"], as history and photography infiltrate each other. -- The San Diego Union-Tribune, 24 November 2002

Customer Reviews

Still images vividly capture the desperation and death
The collaborative effort of Sean Sexton (who has been collecting historic photographs of Ireland for thirty years) and Irish historian Christine Kinealy, The Irish: A Photohistory 1840-1940 is an incredible compendium of black-and-white period photographs showcasing Irish individuals, Irish culture, and Irish history. The first photographs are from 1840, a year after the discovery of the photographic process became publicized. These still images vividly capture the desperation and death that marked the Great Potato Famine, severe struggles over land rights and politics, the impact of modernization, and much more, up through approximately 1939 and the beginning of the second world war. The text presents an informative and straightforward account of Irish history, and lends the insight of scholarship to the vividly emotional photographs. The Irish is very highly recommended for personal and community library collections.

Disappointing Collection
This is a rather pedestrian collection of photos and text covering a century of Irish history that contains some of the most riveting events in an Irish saga never lacking for riveting events. Some of the photos are interesting in that they are unfamiliar to a student of that period of Irish history but the selection overall seemed to me rather dull and not as absorbing as it could or should have been.