World Fiddle Day Kerry founder member, PJ Teahan asked me to show a handful of the photographs I’ve taken of music related events and people down through the past 30 odd years.
I’ve compiled a collection of 50 which will be shown in a slide show at 6-30pm on Saturday evening. This will happen amid a packed programme of great music and a talk and film by The Liberties, Dublin born, flute player, photographer / film-maker, Mick O’Connor.
Later, at 7-30pm, Mick, who was the subject of a TG4 Sé mo Laoch documentary in 2009, will base his own presentation of photographs and film he shot of the late Jerry McCarthy.
Mick will also help me with my own maiden showing in any forum. As a half Scart breed anyway it’s a privilege and a pleasure to get an invitation to be a part of the great and growing occasion which the World Fiddle Day event and the Scart involvement has become.
My exhibition is based on photographs taken and often just snapped as I saw them and is not a blueprint or plan for good or great photography. Many of these photographs were taken with whatever film I had in the bag or camera at a specific time.
Many would have been taken with the wonderfully forgiving Kodak 1600 ASA film. This is a film which saved many a sporting occasion in the depths of winter when clouds and rain defied you to see even the goal-keeper when he went off outside his own square to take a kick-out. The downside of this film are the balls of gravelly grain you feel you could pick up and kick around compared to the sea-sand like Kodak Tri-X 400 or the Ilford FP4.
The photographer too may have been under a cloud or on cloud nine and in various states on inebriation when some of them were taken.
However, with modern scanning methods I’ve managed to distill a presentable image from most of the negatives I encountered for this showing.
As the exhibition deals almost exclusively with Scartaglin and its events and people, ideally we would love to involve the audience in a discussion on the content.
I know, from experience, that anytime an old photograph is seen and discussed there is always so much more to the photograph than the mere image. The old adage ‘A Picture Paints a Thousand Words’ comes to mind.
If time allows us, after the ‘music photographs’ I have a small selection of pictures taken of the wonderfully dedicated and talented ‘Sliabh Luachra Drama Group’ who base themselves in the village centre where all this activity will be going on on Saturday afternoon / evening.
The list of events on World Fiddle Day can be checked out with a click on the link here: http://www.mainevalleypost.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/poster.jpg
