Roisin McDonough, Chief Executive Arts Council of N.Ireland pictured at the launch of Magnum Ireland, an exhibition of 150 photographs featuring Irish life, North and South taken over the last six decades.


A major exhibition of photographs taken in Ireland by members of the celebrated Magnum group of international photographers opened at the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast yesterday (30th June).

Magnum Ireland comprises some 150 photographs taken over almost 60 years by some of Magnum's best known photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, Josef Koudelka, Martin Parr, Eve Arnold and many others.

Decade by decade, the exhibition presents an evocative and arresting visual history of Ireland, North and South. Snapshots of people at race meetings in Co.Tipperary and a Puck Fair in Co.Kerry illustrate the predominantly rural nature of Irish Life in the earlier decades and contrast beautifully with the vintage prints of workers in Belfast's Harland and Wolff shipyard. Bruce Davidson's work brilliantly captures the eagerly anticipated arrival of Duffy's Circus which enlivened the staid Ireland of the 1960s.

The Northern Troubles of the 1970s and 1980s are captured in hard hitting black and white photographs by Abbas, Ian Bery, Philip Jones Griffiths and others. As Eamonn McCann puts it "the gloves were off and the guns were out". The streets of Belfast and Derry are thronged with British soldiers as public demonstrations, funeral processions and vestiges of everyday life continue around them.

The images from the 1990s show a country in transition, from burnt out cars in Darndale in Dublin and an abandoned house in mid-Ulster to immaculately dressed young women in a gospel hall in N.Ireland and a fashion shoot in Connemara. By the 2000s the party is in full swing, literally in photographs by Stuart Franklin of the Trinity Ball and other scenes of revellery, and, metaphorically, in the growth of middle class housing estates and upmarket hotels.

Magnum Photos is a world-renowned photographic co-operative owned by its photographer members, who chronicle and interpret the world's peoples, events, issues and personalities.

Through its four offices in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, and a network of 15 sub-agents, it provides photographs to the press, television, publishers, the advertising industry, galleries and museums acroos the world.

The exhibition in Belfast's Ormeau Baths Gallery is open now and runs until 16th September .

For Further info contact
Ormeau Baths Gallery
18a Ormeau Avenue
Belfast, BT2 8HS
Tel 028 9032 1402