ON LEAVING AGAIN!

Claire Weir and Brian Maxwell returned home, in love, from London together some months ago.
Having evaluated the situation here and the difficulties involved in finding meaningful employment
they have decided to move to Perth.Western Australia.
Claire has lived there twice before as a child and when she finished college some years ago she spent over a year there before moving home, and then moving to London.
Indeed I first made contact with Claire when she was living in Freemantle just outside Perth. She had seen and liked my work on the net and started a conversation about it and photography in general. Little did i know then that I would photograph her for my series, when she returned home with Brian, and now as she is about to leave with only a few days left in Ireland.
Not a voluntary parting as Claire and Brian would be happy to stay here if work was plenty and they could have a comfortable life.But its not to be.

So here go Brian and Claire for the 3rd time in a few years.
You cant say they are not trying to make it work.
The work was made on Cecilia Street, Temple Bar in the city's cultural quarter, a place often frequented by Claire and friends whilst living working and attending college in Dublin.
 This I may say now is the final shot of the series and I now consider the series complete!
The work once more was helped by the efforts of Artur Sikora on lighting so big thanks there for all those shoots Artur was there most often with about 77 of them under his belt now, thanks Artur!!
And indeed everyone who assisted the process at the shoots or in some other way.



It is such a delight to see a plan coming together no matter how big or how small a project seems to be. It's always a good time when you feel like there is starting to be a shape on it.
When this happens your confidence and your determination to get the job done rises,your faith in yourself as an artist and your belief in your work is at a high. Time to harness all this energy now
and move forward into the final phase of visitations and landscape reshoots. Once this is almost complete it will be time to find a publishing partner to put a book together, a big book!
This is how I feel right now as things are begining to gell in my head!
Last Tuesday I launched the next phase of the Leaving Dublin Project at Siamse Tíre, Tralee, County Kerry.
This show On Leaving offers  the viewer a unique perspective into the process that I have followed for over 3 years putting this work together. And still it grows.
At this point the first plank of the work is completed.
84 in number with over 120 participants the leaving Dublin portraits have now been distilled down into a completed 12 minute video I hope to organise some projections again soon. My journal, the documentary evidence of its completion is now on show in Kerry  side by side with the finished video,all complimented by a beautiful soundtrack by Ian Monahan and Aisling Keogh.  you can see the journal  here.
Also in the show I have shown for the first time seven landscapes from the series a survey for the departed.In this series I consider the city and survey it  photographically on behalf of my sitters, by revisiting the eighty or so locations used in the original parting shots.
These three strands I hope will draw the viewer into a conversation about the current wave of migrations and with the individual testimonies of all sitters continue to flesh out the reality of several different cases ans scenarios which in turn help  to help dispel the myth that most of these exiles are volunteers and adventurers, a total untruth which has continued to be spun out by our own Politicos!!
In addition to this conversation there is another strand which seeks to build a conversation with the sitters as they continue to do what they do wherever in the world that might be.
This is the part that gives me hope for the future and shows in most cases the upside of a multifaceted story.
On with the show now In Kerry and its there until the 19th of October .(see some doc shots here)
After that I will try to build an exhibition schedule into next year as I try to continue my travels to complete the work and find a way to resolve it in its final form, a mighty publication!
Any hints on how to achieve this please use the comments box and if indeed you have any thing to say about the above image or the project as a whole please feel free!!
As always big thanks and please use the share buttons on the top right!