Dublin

How like people great cities are. They have their ages and stages, their public faces and private places, their moments of triumph and tragedy, their moods and their mysteries. And like people great cities also have their intimates and lovers artists who have sought in various forms to capture their essence for themselves and for posterity. Dublin, a storied city of many centuries' heritage, has never lacked for portraitists, being famously recorded in the extreme contrast of Joyce's word-maps and Malton's elegant prints. Now comes Robert Ballagh, Ireland's leading artist of the younger generation, to record through the eye of the camera the city of his birth. Ballagh's architectural training has enabled him to surprise us with aspects of built structures which would otherwise remain undiscovered; with his artist's eye he can compose streetscapes and landscapes of unexpected contrast and beauty; and his sense of perspective, historical no less than visual, gives him the ability to see Dublin's pasts in its present. Ballagh's camera gives us, memorably, Dublin living and lived in. Robert Ballagh writes his own foreword to the photographs and Ciaran Carty contributes an introductory essay.