PAUL KANE GALLERY CHRISTMAS EXHIBITION 2023
Irish Architectural Institute, Merrion Square, Dublin 2.
Opening Wednesday 6 December at 6pm.
Duration 7-16 December (excl. weekends)
Noon to 5pm.
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ROYAL CANAL LINES
These are two images from an ongoing project called ‘PROJECT FLOATING’, this being Part 4 and titled ‘Royal Canal Lines’. The entire project is based along the Royal Canal close to my home. This is a departure from the three previous parts, in so far as it feels as if it has nothing to do with this photographer’s personal issues, but all to do with this photographer enjoying what the eye perceives, and striving a way to share with others the magic of what I see. Yet is is also ALL to do with the previous personal issues, in so far as I am free of the pain of them, and no longer afraid.
Taken looking directly into the Royal Canal at very close quarters, we see the bare tendrils of growth almost as a line drawing on the surface, then details of 'what lies beneath'. The composition is made at source, not cropped later. It is something of an expression of the obvious concept that all art has its teacher in nature. In these images, for example, I can see the quality of line work by of some of the greatest artists of our time, like Miro, Matisse and Picasso.
The project is on hold for the past year or more, due to ongoing works obstructing access to the canal from where I live. It has also become a little less safe to stroll along with a camera, but we are confident once the works have finished, the safety issue will be dealt with. I cannot tell you how much I look forward to that time, and continuing this concept!
Part of the impulse in making these images is to explore how nature itself may teach us how not to destroy our earth, or planet; how to avoid becoming extinct. Can it teach us before it’s too late? Can we be taught this lesson gently, or will it require nature to become violent towards humankind?
Seeing how nature in all its wonder took over during Covid, and how magical it felt to be inferior to nature, to look to it as my host and not the other way around, told me that frankly the natural world would be better off without us if we don’t ‘come to our spit’ and realise we must be respectful of our generous hosts. In some ways these images (only two here) are my way of saying thank you to what is on offer by my host, the earth, and allowing myself to do this with a sense of wonder, and freedom from the negativity of doomsday thoughts.
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The photographs framed and exhibited are approximately one meter wide, as large as I could make them allowing they may need to fit on the wall of someone’s home. But they need to be large. You cannot fully see on this website the detail involved. I wanted people to enter the gallery and first see the lines, then on closer inspection their eyes need to ‘scan’ it, rather than take it all in, in one go. They are a tale of two images: the line drawing element, then what lies beneath.
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PAULA T NOLAN
Royal Canal Lines I
89cm (W) x 60cm (H)
Archival pigment print on Photo Rag Pearl
Edition: 3 + 2AP
€950 (Framed)
€500 (Unframed)
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PAULA T NOLAN
Royal Canal Lines I I
89cm (W) x 60cm (H)
Archival pigment print on Photo Rag Pearl
Edition: 3 + 2AP
€950 (Framed)
€500 (Unframed)
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These photographs are all taken along a stretch of the Royal Canal between Sheriff Street and Drumcondra. You can see by the ice in the last few (photos begin with more recent), the project started in Winter. It was the winter of 2021.
During the winter of 2020-2021, my heart was broken. Walking with the camera was perhaps the only relief to be had from this hurt. I found myself drawn towards images that would be beautiful if only they hadn’t been hurt themselves, polluted, disrespected and betrayed. I have yet to meet a man or woman, a child even, who cannot express a love of the beauty of nature, yet these same people betray it by careless pollution. So these images tied in with my own feelings of betrayal and being disrespected. Did I see the beauty first, or the rubbish?
Definitely the beauty, followed by the rubbish, followed by the beauty possible in both together. I suppose you’d call it a terrible beauty. I know many people won’t be up for that. If the human condition is to err, for any kind of peace and forgiveness, we need to accept this; to accept a beauty that includes hurts and betrayals – those that happen to us, and those we perpetuate on others. It would be spring time, and ‘Project Floating 2’, before I could get up close and personal with this concept, and the psychology of destruction. How do we become mindless of our mark on our world?
I worked closely with the Father Browne (1880-1960) photography collection for almost fourteen years, designing his books. I have chosen to treat these photographs as duotones, and the tone chosen is one used for many years for the printing of Father Browne’s photographs. It is a ‘secret’ combination, given to me once those holding the collection felt I could be trusted not to share it. It is subtle, and I often refer to it as a ‘champagne tint’.
Copy and paste link to Father Browne website: http://www.fatherbrowne.com/
All the PROJECT FLOATING photographs are taken along the same stretch of the Royal Canal, between Sheriff Street and Drumcondra.
Come spring time of 2021, the heartbreak I’d experienced through the winter began to abate, and I felt a defiance to emerge from it. Getting up close and personal with the debris, which I’d hitherto photographed from a distance, wasn’t a conscious thing. Now, Instead of guessing the tin can way over there might be a Coca Cola can, now we can see the branding as clearly as any billboard poster. I loved the contexts around these discarded objects, as spring and eventually summer encased them with green tendrils, almost like a Venus flytrap for rubbish. I began to see how nature responded to the carelessness of humans in discarding of their rubbish. How attempts to heal the hurt covered it over at first, then over a very long period of time if the object was biodegradable, nature disposed of it. For non biodegradable objects, the harm is permanent and cumulative. It may be hidden, but that is no harm reduction, as any dredge of waterways will contest.
These images are composed by standing as close to the edge as is possible without falling into the water, gaining a steady foot and centring the subject.
Eventually these shots finally began to overlap with taking shots with NO rubbish, some contained in PROJECT FLOATING 3.
All the PROJECT FLOATING photographs are taken along the same stretch of the Royal Canal, between Sheriff Street and Drumcondra.
It took a long journey through a dark winter, into spring, then summer, before I was able to see pure nature without the pollution that had hitherto so endeared itself to me. I was finally able to see the world without hurt eyes, or what I sometimes call ‘The Crippled Eye’. There is so much going on underwater alongside these growths, small insects darting, light dappling off the tiniest tendril, the wind making ripples then stopping to take another breath.
For ‘PROJECT FLOATING 1’, I walked fast, stopped for seconds only, then snapped. For ‘PROJECT FLOATING 2’, I stopped for longer periods of time, went up close to the water, took care composing the final image. So for part three, I slowed down some more, taking longer again to compose each shot, making sure I was happy with the composition of the shapes, the light, what hit the four corners. I found many of them began to resemble sections of Renaissance paintings, and was happy sometimes to work to achieve this by moving about and choosing one section over another. The only photos I cropped afterwards were ones I took specifically knowing how I would crop them later. This is how deliberate I was about when to pause a composition, and when to press that shutter button.
It struck me at this juncture that the understanding of the environment, ergo respect for it, may be linked to haste versus taking time. How true this may be in both choice of romantic partner (such hurt began the project) and in how we interact with nature. Being ‘mindful’ is something of a trend. Could this be harnessed in some way to protect nature?
I live in the North Inner City, a place where the boundaries enjoyed (or not) in leafier suburbs are non-existent. I like this. People say it’s not as safe as other parts of Dublin city, I say I don’t know about that; here I can see the person who is a risk to me from a mile away, but I’ve had more money stolen from me by people in suits than tracksuits. The former appear as stand up citizens, so the guard is down. Here, your guard is always up if you are out walking. So experientially, I feel safer.
What has all this got to do with pollution? It’s to do with ownership. How to make people take ownership (metaphorically) of their surroundings and be mindful of it, proud to keep it clean. In that context, working with the local community is the method I find best, and any campaigning I do is on the the X platform.
https://twitter.com/IrishPTNolan
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Making fast decisions, as with ‘PROJECT FLOATING 1’, is something I’m trained to do in my decades working with design for print. Especially for newspapers and magazines with tight deadlines. You become highly attuned to what is the best image, what works best in a particular context, and to making those choices in nanno seconds. I bring this to photography in spades, along with decades of looking at various genres of painting and other art forms. Sometimes I can feel these various levels of experience join forces almost without my willing them to do so, then ‘snap’, the image.
I love herons. I also love Caravaggio paintings. When the light obeys, both loves meet.
