Slowly westward: A journey through a folded landscape

Abstract

My thesis, Slowly Westward: A Journey Through A Folded Landscape, is made up of two distinct parts. The first part contains three essays which recount some of my journeys through the Irish landscape. The second part is a photobook which is made up of images taken during my time spent travelling through the island of Ireland. During the 19th century Ireland became the first country in the world to have a detailed map made of its entire surface. As this map was made by a colonial power, it led to a number of issues regarding representation, translation and construction.

The first text, Bull Island, looks at the unintended physical consequences that colonial surveys had on Dublin bay with the construction of a sea wall which inadvertently led to the development of Bull Island. This text also refers to Allan Sekula and his approach of Critical Realism. The second text, Croghan, deals with the construction of contemporary Ireland and looks at artists including Sean Keating, who dealt with ideas of national self-representation in a post-independence Ireland. The third text, Inishark, recounts a journey to the abandoned island of Shark which was initially only partially mapped. Here I was looking for a space beyond the effects of the maps. This essay includes references to Tim Robinson’s remapping of the Irish west coast and John Berger’s thoughts on the connection between photography and time.

The accompanying photobook is my personal response to my time spent travelling through this deeply layered space. The book is not sequenced chronologically or geographically. Rather it is made up of images reconfigured into a sequence which draws into question the contested nature of Ireland, and its numerous histories, representations and interpretations.