A MAUDE GONNE MOMENT

 I seen somebody posting a picture of the full neg of this image on Instagram recently, Its a big neg from a very big camera(life-size image). Well here is one I made on 10x8 of an original contact print from the same negative. 

 At the time I was doing some prep work on photographic items for a big expo at the NLI. When I was approached and asked if I had a solution for a complex problem, it was to make a copy of this and hang it in the show,  ( now that might not seem complex but hey so), at the time I think I was shooting a 12mega pixel(mp)  digital dslr and the 22mp Hasselblad was still beyond me( I think two years later I got the 39mp H series camera and so my high mp life began) But up to this point it was always based on needs what format you could do a job on . And as it turns out the the 10x8 camera provided us with the solution at this particular time. The camera itself was a gift to me from photographic friend, ( now deceased) Brendan Doyle, Brendan was the photographer at the National Museum since the 70’s through to his late retirement at the age of 70 in the late 90’s, so this kind of kit was hight tech stuff in his day but had started to wane in use as film got better and then as digital took over it faded from view. Now days it is the preserve of the very wealthy photographer as the price of film soars and the availability of processing and scanning shrinks to a few labs worldwide, But back in the day ( this was shot around 2005-6) this was a viable solution.

  Brendan had given me the camera some years earlier ( perhaps around 2001) but it was shy a lens and a very important bellows. It took some years  but  I acquired a bellows thanks to a college contact David Laudien, who found the needed pieces on German eBay. With the bellows for the camera I felty confident to buy a Schneider 300mm lens on eBay also, it came all the way from California and shocked me when it arrived on account of its sheer beauty. A few film holders and then I was ready to go. So when the request came through to find a solution for the Maude Gonne photo I thought immediately  of shooting it on 10x8 transparency. 

  So a plan was put in place - my good friend Matthew Cains for the Library came across to the National Photographic Archive where the piece was held, unframed the print and brought it on its baseboard into the exhibition space on the ground floor.

 I loaded up 4 or 6 sheets of film below in the darkroom, got the camera in place and lit the work with a couple of Bowens flasheads, balance the lighting, metered for an aperture value and bang the work was done. I am not so sure but I think our good friend Jim Butler of Repro 35 looked after the processing of the film, he definitely  had the scans done on an old drum scanner somewhere in Dublin, and after we corrected for the silvering on the base of the print (caused by oxidation over time) he made a fine print ready for the expo.

Matthew had concerns about the frame and wanted it restored, so in the meantime he commissioned a duplicate to be manufactured, This was done by my own dear brother Ian.  This   marked our first collaboration in working together to bring good work to show. It was a tricky task, although the frame was plain in appearance, the method of manufacture was by todays standards complex but Ian like myself Matthew and Jim, rose to the ocassion. Over 20 years later the work is still on show at the Nli permanent expo YEATS:The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats

So here is the full roll of honour regarding this image, 

Alfred Werner the image, (life sized from his v big room sized camera)

Maude Gonne,Sitter

The Photograph was kept safe by the Photographic Society of Ireland

Before it was acquired by  Grainnne Mac Laughlin for the National library of Irelands National photographic Archive.

Conserved by Matthew Cains

Rephotographed by me on the fab Linhof  Kardan Color  10x8 inch Camera

processed by Jim Butler for Repro 35

Scanned by ?

Printed by Repro 35

Camera provided by Brendan Doyle, 

Facilitated by David Laudian

and some man in California

a metaphor for our times

this  post was first published in 2010 I have just added the second photo inline for my good friend Vukasin

Early last year i was walking down O'Connell street,Dublin.And I passed a building I had passed Hundreds of times in my life.It was the former main bookings office of Aer lingus,

the Irish national airline.This was in its day a beautiful example of Irishness, both in its look and in its ambiance.My lasting memory of this office the warmh which exuded from the people who confidently greeted you from behind the the service counter,as they tapped away on their green screens to bring you up to the minute information on pricing and availability of flights out of and into all of the main capitals of Europe and the U.S.A.

The entrance to the this building was beautifully crafted in polished steel and glass,very clean modernist lines,with a large double glass door which effortlessly swung open with the timidest of pushes.

The crowning feature of this design had to be the winged handles.

You could say this doorway was in itself a beautiful framing of all of Irelands aspirations as it prepared to fly as close to the sun as any other nation could manage.

Anyhow, this all changed when in the nineties aer lingus suspended selling seats from this, and all offices and retired to web based sales.

the Office closed and was never reoccupied.

So back to the day of my stroll.

In the past I had mused over the possible meanings of the wings being bound in chains but never ever read it as a curse.So on this snowy sunday morning in february 2009 I was shocked to pass the building to find,that not only had the chains been taken from the doors, but the wings too had been removed!Two months later the whole building was gone, around about the same time the country almost ground to a halt as the huge bubble that was the irish property development industry imploded on itself!

Personally I feel saddened that such apretty piece of our past can go almost unlamented.

I can only draw sollace from the fact that on two of the hundreds of times that i passed this way I was carrying a camera to document the passing of this little treasure!

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