Why the horse’s arse?

In Scotland we would refer to somewhere remote as ‘the arse end of nowhere’ as in the back of beyond, rarely seen, and often takes commitment and effort to get there. 

As an offer of context for those of you who don’t know me well, I self-identify as having grown up in Scotland and Ireland.  Born in 1972 I have been travelling back and forth all of my life to Castleblaney, Co. Monaghan just across the border from what would be referred to as ‘the north’. I spent all or most of my school holiday’s there with my grandparents and through the years traveled all over Ireland. When my kids were born my eldest was there within the first weeks on this earth and they too experienced the magic of a place that felt like home.

Those travels took me to Dublin many times but ten years or more ago when I visited, there was a different Dublin emerging, I have not returned often since for more than a night or two. Therefore, when the 1st ever Dublin Street Photography Festival (@dspf2024) was announced I was onto it, I booked Thursday to Tuesday to get the full festival experience which ran Thursday to Monday. As the time approached, I started to think about what I wanted from my time there, I wanted to explore away from the city centre, which meant I was looking for more documentary than street photos. The city centre would provide better opportunity, staying in busy streets where moments happening worth photographing being at higher odds. I wanted to get a feeling of what and where the real Dublin existed in 2024, I’m not sure I was prepared for what I found, well I was prepared but didn’t expect to go as deep as I did in a short time. Also I didn’t account for the part the festival would play in getting under the surface of Dublin, but also allowing me space to explore myself, my photographic practice, and clarifying that I’m doing alright following my instincts in my photography. So, here we go, it will likely get political, it will uncover not so nice social issues, but, it will hopefully tempt some people to go out with the tourist hotspots and look for the horse’s arse of Dublin, trust me it's worth it!                                                                                                                                                                           

A porthole to the past and the start of my journey to present day Dublin.  

My mum had a community connection with Dublin having arrange multi-generational exchanges with youths and older adults back in the 1990’s between Maryhill in Glasgow and people of Rialto in Dublin, both areas blighted by poor housing, poverty and addiction, some may know the area for the Fatima Flats in Dublin’s Southeast.

Landing in Dublin on Thursday morning I took the image above, it incorporates part of the structure of one of the new bridges spanning the Liffey, looking through down to the old docklands which I later explored to find there was little old about them with multimillion Euro apartments, bars, and businesses and the odd nod to the old docklands. New buildings with old features litter the city and give a nod to what was once there.

Crossing the bridge there was a serendipitous moment waiting, in need of breakfast I stopped a person and asked if they were local and where they could recommend. Without hesitation they said yes and directed me to Catherine’s Bakery “best breakfast in Dublin, google it” they said but it’s a fair walk they warned! I entered the details into maps and with a 45min walk I thought what the hell, follow the sat nav, take photographs, hopefully see some of the city I don’t know, and the breakfast better be good! Now I knew I was heading southeast but hadn’t looked at anything other than that. It took me along the Liffey, through Temple Bar, more on that later, and past Dublin Castle to an area called the Liberties. There I found the bakery, the best full Irish breakfast I’ve experienced ever! This is where my Irish adventure began, and on the Tuesday before heading home that’s where it would end, I had found my spot in Dublin that I would return to over the days to come, not for the breakfast but for the people, the atmosphere, the genuine nature of the place away from the tourism that relies on the pretense of Irish culture to bring in the revenue but doesn’t really (in my opinion) value it or its people. This shopfront in The Liberties displays the faces of the community past and present, events, the photographs celebrate the people of this small part of Dublin.

Whilst having breakfast I consulted the maps again to find I was not far from Rialto, I followed the my instincts which took me out to the canal and in through Dolphin House where I came upon the community center. I was welcomed in and had an amazing unscheduled meeting with community development workers and the manager of the project. Their work empowering the community is outstanding and I would love to spend more time with them. Thinking about the intergenerational exchanges of the past when people stayed in one another’s houses, would that be allowed these days if not would it be as powerful? Interestingly I didn’t make any images, as we discussed community empowerment, taking felt wrong. We discussed art and photography as ways of giving community a voice and they shared a personal insight to a project “burning the demons”. This was so powerful and guided by the community development workers raised the issue of addiction. They combined two images, one of a girl swinging around the washing poll and one of a hypodermic needle in someone’s arm in a mural that depicted the girl swinging on a rope around the needle. This was hung outside the polling office at a time of election and then when asked what the community wanted to do with the mural, they responded, “fucking burn it” this became an event ending in the burning of one half, the needle, and keeping the half of the girl. Look at more of the project at http://rialtoyouthproject.net/burning-the-demons/

Later I would see the modern day take on the swings made in the back court of social housing using the washing poles.

Aesthetic vs Understanding

Juxtaposition is such an overused word in the street photography community, YouTubers have in fact bastardised the word with an oversimplification of a concept that can go much deeper than the aesthetic they usually refer to. One which I own up to being drawn to such as these two gentlemen with hats and overall appearance.

On a more serious note when you consider the conditions suffered by those in Príosúin Chill Mhaighneann (Kilmainham Gaol) before it was decommissioned in 1924, and standing across from this is the Hilton hotel. One with forced imprisonment, the other with voluntary stays!

When you look deeply at Dublin there are Juxtaposition’s of ideologies, one being the need to retain that Dublin ‘culture’ as a means to sustaining the tourism and attraction of international businesses to sustain an economy which has resulted in them being identified as one of the ‘richest’ countries of the world. Taking that concept, I explored and have tried to convey this in my images, the concrete render with a square cut out to give a glimpse of what lies beneath, but not so much that it causes shit to collapse. You see it takes much harder work over a sustained period to fix the mortar that keeps things together than to plaster over the top of it and slap some new paint on! The horse’s arse photograph, this was in Southeast Dublin, where I meant some fantastic salt of the earth people, they get to see the horses arse as it trots off, the tourists get to see their facial features as they take a nostalgic carriage ride through the parts of town that from a certain height off the ground you don’t have to step over the numerous people sleeping on the streets, the smell of piss, the shooting galleries, and the uncomfortableness of sipping your Bewley’s Coffee and cream cake that cost you (I’m guessing here) £15. The indigenous people are struggling to stay in the city and to understand right wing politics we have to acknowledge the role that fear plays in their tactics, I’m not talking fear of physical violence, I’m talking fear of difference, a scapegoat, an alternative reason or reasons why life is so shit, not due to government policies, and certainly not due to lack of spending in such a wealthy country! No, it’s because of these ‘other’ people coming and exploiting the welfare system and taking the housing or being put up in hotels, not the government clearing of social housing in place is put student accommodation and flats, no sorry………. multi-million Euro apartments! Not happy with taking the local persons land for housing, the local pubs, cafes, and businesses close because the new clientele wants something different like Gastro Pubs and trendy coffee bars, to reflect their opulent lifestyle of success. So, the local businesses have to adapt and in the words of a local man he says, “they close and get refurbished then open with a ready-made customer base, it’s unbelievable!”. He also said the locals do not return as they don’t feel they fit in even if they can afford the increased prices. Gentrification is the soft word for what is going on in Dublin from what I have seen in a short time and taking the time to seek people out, I’m no reporter and this is based on a small sample of 1st hand accounts of Dublin people, observations, and my sociological perspective, some would say socialist! But I would use stronger language at the risk of coming under criticism for minimizing what is going on in the rest of the world, I would go as far to say this is economic cleansing, clearing communities by making it unaffordable for people without the means to remain, therefore priced out of the market in the context of a cost of living crisis seen across many countries including the UK. The signs are around if you take the time to look for them, literal signs pleading for improved availability and standards of social housing for all. The reliance on community initiatives, community gardens and others to sustain people. And the recognition that the political narrative is being resisted by some.

The gems I found on the search for the horse’s arse!

Now, I searched and explored a fair bit of Dublin City, but it was limited over a short period and all on foot, I’m sad to say I only uncovered a special part that was under my nose for the whole trip near the end. But again, let the journey take you, trust in your instinct, and be open to taking directions and opportunity when it presents itself, that way, you will experience something different or in terms of photography get images that others don’t. Street photography can be categorized and there are so many YouTube videos out there, “5 things you need to know”, “best lens for street”, “do these 5 things to be a better street photographer”, the list goes on and the images being pumped into Instagram are variations of the same thing.    

I dipped into the city for workshops and often walked through on the way to other areas, looking for connection, authenticity, and to improve my understanding of the city, I use my photography to learn about people and places, it’s a sociological study. I want shots that others don’t have, I want my photography to express my thoughts and feelings and portray my values that show something of me!

A talk by photo journalist Eric Luke blew me away, I got to hear first-hand the story and events leading to an image that earned him a World Press Photo Award https://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo-contest/1998/eric-luke/1 a photograph that nobody else got, because he went in the opposite direction to the crowds of press photographers, was guided by the local people, used his experience and placed his trust in others. He said he could have stayed with the crowd and got an almost identical image as tens of others, or gone home with nothing but what would an image just like the others add to the world? I am not comparing myself to Eric and his outstanding career, but the festival was about learning, and I would rather learn that message than 20 things to avoid as a “street photographer”. It validated that my images are maybe not at the standard that they could be, don’t portray a coherent story, but by listening to myself, they might just tell something different to the crowd.

I saw people literally on their knees on the street!

I met the people working in communities to address the social issues. I met the people who are getting through some of their tough times like Michael.

I met some of the younger generation from Dublin who are enjoying the vibrancy of the city and have the means to enjoy the city living.

I witnessed the lack of education and interest in what really is the root cause of our social problems when two guys looked at the image below and one said the other “sure how would I know?”

We did get to see the other half of the horse ………………………..

So, what was under my nose all that time? On the last day of the festival, Monday, I had got to know Jim Leonard from him giving a portrait workshop. We ended up having a few pints of Guinness and he mentioned Mulligan’s pub, with my grandparents being Mulligan we decided we had to go. Now following on from Eric’s talk he worked with the Irish Times, Mulligan’s Poolbeg street was where the journalists would hang out whilst waiting for film to be developed and editors to decide if their images were being used. It is steeped in history and the barman Noel has worked there over forty years, he remembers those days of Eric and other journalists hanging out between jobs. This place was right under my nose all that time and a fitting end to conclude my time in Dublin. My last image is of Noel as a nod to all the people who made my trip memorable, people who have become friends, people who I may never meet again but will live on in my memory not because I learned 20 things about street photography, because I took the time to connect and tried to understand. The horse’s arse of Dublin is a special place, this is my documentary of my time there and what I made of it, if you take the time and effort, you will find your own documentary of Dublin, if you stay in Temple Bar, you’ll have your 10 things you learned about street photography.

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Thanks for reading.

Scott

P.S. Don’t ever let difference cause you to respond the way we are seeing some on the far right doing so, discrimination of Irish is still seen today with them being the brunt of the jokes that portray them as stupid, flippant comments are overlooked in relation to Irish origins. We need to remain aware that right wing politics want us to believe that it is the ‘others’ that are causing the social problems and not their policies. I will leave you with this one that was taken in Dublin, composing the image to read ‘Stop Racism”.