The Museum of Childhood Ireland and An Post are pleased to support and launch this first Exhibition and Book by photographer Barry Delaney.
It runs until this Sunday, October 20th.
Barry Delaney’s photo exhibition at GPO
Photographer Barry Delaney launched his debut book on Dublin’s inner city, Stars and Souls of the Liffey, with an accompanying photo exhibition at the General Post Office in Dublin. For 11 years from 2006, Delaney documented life around Dublin’s urban centre, as it went through many changes, boom to bust and back to the more current economic boom.
Much has changed in these communities, but the people remain its very soul. Delaney was fortunate in being allowed by the people in places like St Teresa’s Gardens to document their lives in a fast-changing environment, up to 2016. Everything in life changes, but photos retain people’s memories.
“This collection catalogues the personality and spirit of the city, not based on how it is marketed for outsiders, but by looking directly at the people who live here.” Barry Delaney’s new collection preserves a part of Dublin that is recently gone.
“These pictures are at eye level and on the level.”
Dublin changed a lot between 2006 and 2016. Depending on who you ask, you’ll get a different version of what that change was and whether it was good for the city. People might talk about the new buildings we have, the changing ethnicity, the gentrification, whether the city has lost its soul, whether it is more vibrant or whether it’s still a dump. Barry was there throughout that period.
For 11 years Barry Delaney documented life in inner city Dublin as it went through many changes, boom to bust to boom.
“Much has changed in communities like St. Teresa’s Gardens and Sheriff Street, but the people remain its very soul, and I was lucky they allowed me in to document their lives in such a rapidly changing environment.” Barry Delaney
The book coincides with the exhibition Stars and Souls of the Liffey, Dublin 2006–2016 exhibition at the GPO, Dublin, October 2019.
This collection catalogues the personality and spirit of the city, not based on how it is marketed for outsiders, but by looking directly at the people who live here. It captures moments where people are being themselves, as well as the poses that Dubs are known for. The cocksure stare, the front, the attitude, the scepticism. The bullshit detector that is always on and pointed towards the camera.
This collection then, is many things. A record of a city and the people who live in it. An invitation to a staredown. An unfiltered portrait of childhood and adolescence on its own terms. But it is also a glimpse into what it means to be part of a city. That is, to live a life that, as John Peel once put it, is ‘always different, always the same.’
