THE LIGHT OF DAY
THE LIGHT OF DAY
Tony O’Shea Text by Colm Toíbín
RRB PHOTOBOOKS BRISTOL
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Tony O’Shea Tony O’Shea is interested in the moment where the ritual and the casual face each other in the complex light that comes from Irish skies. He likes gatherings and public spaces. And he is watching for the second when, even if his subjects are performing, a guard has been let down, and the camera becomes an uneasy, tentative, hesitant window into the soul. He seeks images of individual loneliness and isolation, figures in a state of reverie and contemplation, or figures in a state of excitement. In some of his photographs there is a tension between the ordinariness of the scene – selling turkeys for Christmas, or travelling by bus, or being by the sea – and the intensity of the image. The old man in the front seat of the upper deck of a bus in one of these photographs has cleared some of the condensation away and now stares through it. The image is stark, severe. It is not merely a portrait of old age, however, or the implacable human spirit. It is not a photograph of something that can be easily summarized. The camera has captured the man himself in all his particularly and physicality. And then it has moved the image out of time, away from what is simple and can be seen, towards mystery. The photographs evade easy interpretation. In another bus photo, a young man with a bird in his hand is looking directly at something outside the frame; his gaze is open, free of shadow or suspicion. His companion is engaged in a different way; his gaze is slanted, he is amused. The third gaze belongs to the bird; it is implacable and focused. Beyond the window of the bus is a house and a small tree; pasted on the glass is a sign prohibiting smoking. The image is theatrical and ambiguous. Its rich energy comes from the attention paid to different perspectives, the refusal to settle for one single, stable meaning. The power of these photographs is emphasized by the difficulty in categorizing them. They are both bleak and oddly uplifting; the subjects seem both earthy and strangely spiritual; there are moments of pure beauty and moments that are grim and desolate; they can seem ironic at one glance and then candid and blunt, distant and impartial. It is not as though the photographs play with easy dialectics; instead, what animates them is their dynamic force, their ambiguity, their complicated energy and strength.
O’Shea’s subjects have a strange dignity that comes from their lack of self-consciousness. They are not projecting an image of themselves with the aid of a photographer. They are alone; they do not recognize the camera. Although O’Shea has photographed nationalist parades and religious processions, these are not big moments in history, but more likely to be untidy episodes in an aftermath, people carrying on in the face of defeat. These figures in marches or processions are given comfort by a sense of purpose. What O’Shea captures, however, is not the comfort or the purpose, but an inwardness, a sense of desolation, remoteness in each of the figures. In one of these photographs, there is a group praying, separated from something in front of them by a rope. At the centre is a man and a woman and two girls, perhaps their granddaughters. And then on each side, like figures in a Renaissance painting, are lone figures at prayer, making a sort of symmetry that adds to the still beauty of the scene. Other photographs, however, derive their startling force from a break in symmetry, from what is scattered and untidy. O’Shea loves it when his subjects look in different directions or do not inhabit the scene as though naturally or by right. While some images move from spectacle towards intimacy, capturing privacy with both starkness and sympathy, other photographs are almost public, almost definitive. These include the picture of young people on a cart while a dilapidated Georgian building rises in the background, a cheerful clergyman talking to a woman, a woman outside the General Post Office holding a no-divorce poster, a group of young men with the city of Derry in the background, a man riding a scooter with a dog. These are perfect moments, but O’Shea is, in general, more interested in what an imperfect moment will yield. Many of his images happen when people are about to do something else, when symmetry is about to appear. He composes his image before the image has composed itself. He captures the scene in a sudden moment of unexpectedness. And the result then contains fascinating levels of uncertainty and mystery.
Although some of these photographs were taken in the 1980s, they do not serve to document a time; they have not dated. They have a depth, a sense of painterly stillness that pushes them beyond their own occasion. The composition is as important as the context. Nonetheless, the photographs have an immediacy, they give us a sense that these are real people in a real time and place. The photographs of the Cumberland Street Market in Dublin, the Christmas turkey market behind the Four Courts and the men with dogs in County Kerry are not efforts to capture a vanishing Ireland or a country hidden from view. Part of their appeal comes from the idea that none of this visual landscape has ever been used in advertising or on tourist posters. It is all windswept and strange, unselfconscious. The faces have an intense freshness and vitality. It is the way textures and lines are controlled and managed in these photographs that makes us want to study them. In some, including the picture of the great gathering of men with dogs with some misty hills in the background, or the four dead turkeys resting on the boot of a car while a man lights a cigarette for another, the eye moves from a dominant image in the picture to the surrounding surfaces, the eye finding pattern and then, with a mixture of comedy and gravity, watching as pattern gets dispersed into something that cannot be contained nor easily defined. And that makes these photographs all the more enigmatic and magical.
Colm Toíbín
Football fans welcoming home the Irish team after reaching the
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Bloody Sunday commemoration, Derry, 1987
quarter-finals of Italia 90, 1990
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25th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1997
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Dublin Bus, 1985
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Divorce referendum protest at the GPO Dublin, 1986
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Good Friday procession, North Inner City, Dublin, 1985
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Good Friday procession, Finglas, Dublin, 1990
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Christmas Turkey Market, Mary’s Lane, Dublin, 1991
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Temple Bar, Dublin, 1989
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The Hill Market, Cumberland Street, Dublin, 1985
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Bird Market, Peter Street, Dublin, 1990
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Football fans celebrating an Ireland victory during Italia ‘90,
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Good Friday procession, North Inner City, Dublin, 1985
Dublin, 1990
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The Hill Market, Cumberland Street, Dublin, 1983
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Dublin Bus, 1989
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Reopening a border road on the Monaghan-Fermanagh border,
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Welcoming home the Irish team after reaching the quarter-finals
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1994
of Italia ‘90, Dublin, 1990
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Dublin Bus, 1984
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Christmas Turkey Market, Mary’s Lane, Dublin, 1992
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Christmas Turkey Market, Mary’s Lane, Dublin, 1991
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The Hill Market, Cumberland Street, Dublin, 1987
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North Inner City Dublin, 1982
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Papal visit, Phoenix Park, Dublin, 1979
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After a drag hunt, Kenmare, County Kerry, 1996
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Off Patrick Street, Dublin , 1991
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Waiting to welcome home the Irish team from Italia ‘90,
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Christmas Turkey Market, Mary’s Lane, Dublin, 1992
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Day of Action to reopen a border road closed by British
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Republican march, Belfast, 1993
security forces near Kiltyclogher, County Leitrim, 1993
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Journalists waiting for an EU press conference to begin, cheer
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Dublin, 1990
Reopening a border road on the Monaghan-Fermanagh border,
when Ireland win a penalty shoot out during Italia ‘90, 1990
1994
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Good Friday, Seán McDermott Street, Dublin, 1983/84
Improvised monument to mark the spot where three IRA
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Delivering fuel, North Inner City, Dublin, 1987
members had been shot by British security forces, 1987
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Republican commemoration, Strabane, County Tyrone, 1987
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A drag hunt, near Cahersiveen, County Kerry, 1999
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Republican commemoration, Strabane, County Tyrone, 1987
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Painted pony, Smithfield, Dublin, 1989
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25th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1997
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Moving concrete bollards erected by British security forces at a
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The Hill Market, Cumberland Street, Dublin, 1987
border crossing near Kiltyclogher, County Leitrim, 1993
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Pro Cathedral, Dublin, 1987
The RUC remove locals protesting against an Orange Order march
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Stopped at traffic lights, Aungier Street, Dublin, 1984
on Garvaghy Road, Portadown, County Armagh, 1997
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Starting a drag hunt, near Cahersiveen, County Kerry, 2008
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A Republican march, Parnell Square, Dublin, 1987
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Drag Hunt, Ardcost, County Kerry, 2003
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Christmas Turkey Market, Mary’s Lane, Dublin, 1992
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Oliver Bond flats, Dublin, 1982
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Bar, Drum, County Monaghan on 12th July 1986, 1986
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Corpus Christi devotions, Dublin, 1989
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Members of a local marching band preparing to march through
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Shelly Banks, Dublin, 1986
the village of Drum, County Monaghan on 12th July 1986, 1986
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Drag Hunt, Finian’s Bay, County Kerry, 1999
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Demolition, North Inner City Dublin, 1982
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The Spire, O’Connell Street, Dublin, 2019
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Aungier Street, Dublin , 1982
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25th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1997
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Bloomsday, Duke Lane, Dublin, 2019
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Reopening of border crossing on the Monaghan-Fermanagh
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Darndale, Dublin, 1985
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East Pier, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, 1989
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Drag Hunt, Whitechurch, County Cork, 1995
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Gasworks, Dublin, 1983/84
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Christmas Turkey Market, Mary’s Lane, Dublin, 1991
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Welcoming home the Irish team after reaching the quarter-finals
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Carman’s Hall, off Meath Street, Dublin, 2019
of Italia ‘90, Dublin, 1990 75
Dublin Bus, 1982
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25th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Derry , 1997
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Pilgrimage at Faughert, County Louth, 1986
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Gathering for a Drag Hunt, near Cahersiveen, County Kerry, 2015
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Reopening of border crossing on the Leitrim-Fermanagh border, 1993
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Pilgrimage at Faughert, County Louth, 1986
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Drag Hunt, Carhan, near Cahersiveen, County Kerry, 1996
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Good Friday, Finglas, Dublin, 1990
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Welcoming home the Irish team after reaching the quarter finals of Italia ‘90, Dublin, 1990
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Drag Hunt, near Cahersiveen, County Kerry, 1991
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Finglas, Dublin, 1990
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Good Friday, North Inner City, Dublin, 1984
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Drag Hunt, Carhan, near Cahersiveen, County Kerry, 1991
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Christmas Turkey Market, Mary’s Lane, Dublin, 1992
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Tallaght, Dublin, 1985
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Milltown Cemetry, Belfast, 1988
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IRA funeral, Belfast, 1988
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Good Friday, Inchicore, Dublin, 1994
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Meath Street, Dublin, 2019
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Drag Hunt, Pound, near Portmagee, County Kerry, 1994
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Drag Hunt, County Cork, 1997
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Good Friday, Máméan, County Galway, 1993
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Reopening a border crossing on the Monaghan-Fermanagh border, 1993
border, 1994
RRB Photobooks and Gallery of Photography Ireland, October 2020 Photographs © Tony O’Shea Text © Colm Toíbín Selected and Sequenced by Tony O’Shea Edited by Josie Atkinson Layout by Jessamine Thoemmes-Tondowski Image Production by Daniel Scully Printed at Narayana Press, Denmark 978-1-916057-56-2 rrbphotobooks.com galleryofphotography.ie