Over a career in book and magazine design spanning four decades, a rough guess would be I have designed well over 200 books.
Since taking up photography in2013, this skill has been an additional benefit to book design, although it is predominantly for me an artistic pursuit.
My skill set in book work reaches beyond design alone, and includes image research, restoration of photographs, permission/copyright search, some proofreading and copy editing.
Regarding photography, from the outset I wanted to ‘know the tech’ rather than join the school of leaving much to chance. Happenstance can be a great addition, but I personally find understand the technology a great asset.
I use Adobe Lightroom to catalogue all photographs, paying particular attention to utilising their inbuilt database for every photograph so that they export with all file info included.
What follows is a selection of photographs from the book, ‘Wandering Wicklow with Father Browne’, and my essay, which appears in the preliminary pages.
‘Wandering Wicklow with Father Browne’ is edited by Robert O’Byrne, and my thanks to Robert and publisher, Cecilia West, for giving me such free rein with the design and structure of this book.
The photographs presented here include the ‘Then & Now’ shots, taken from the same position as Fr Browne took his (or as best as I could), and images taken to support the start of different chapters. The book is divided into six sections, each an area of Wicklow, and each a day trip. I produced a simple map at the start of the book as a guide to these day trips.
ESSAY by Paula T Nolan
Recreating the Lens of Father Browne
Taken from ‘Wandering Wicklow with Father Browne’, edited by Robert O’Byrne.
Available from www.messenger.ie or from bookshops. Price €19.95.
The journey through Wicklow with Father Browne began with a simple idea: why not recreate some of Father Browne’s iconic photographs in order to show how places looked now, and how much things had changed in the ensuing decades. With Robert O’Byrne, the editor, a decision was made to recreate twenty of the ninety-two originals in this book.
For close to fourteen years as art director with Messenger Publications, it has been my good fortune to design many books of Father Browne photographs – including this book – and to work extensively with the Father Browne archive. Over the years, as designer, photographer and admirer, I’ve become intimately familiar with the view through his lens.
And so it was, armed with my own lenses, that myself and my assistant Ruaidhrí set off to take the inaugural photographs for this book.
The Dominican College stands on a hill just outside Wicklow town, hidden from the road by high walls. The beautiful entrance gate photographed by Father Browne in 1933 is nowhere to be seen (page 48). At the entrance are signs for an organic farm shop and an ecology centre. Where exactly was the convent? Following in the footsteps of Father Browne not only took us back in time but required us to do that most archaic of things: ask for directions. Old-school methods of finding our way became something of a feature of this journey.
Passing the front door of the convent, we ascended a steep path along the right-hand side of the building, past deserted basketball courts, and along a high path to the spot where Father Browne took his photograph of the ‘Convent and new boys’ school’ in 1944 (page 51). As we went about finding the right angles and composition, I felt strangely nervous about presuming to copy such a well-respected photographer. I moved the tripod this way and that in the knowledge that all those years ago Father Browne had stood here doing the same thing.
We only had to move three or four feet to take the next photograph – of ‘Wicklow town and seafront’ (page 53). Taken in 1942, two years before the convent image, it is obvious Father Browne was familiar with this vantage point and used it well. This photograph has a clever composition: by making the image two-thirds sky, the busy foreground is minimised, and the eye is trained to the stone arch bridge in the distance on the left, which itself draws a line to the sandbar stretching from the centre of the image in a pleasing arc to the right.
The question can be asked: was Father Browne a documentary photographer or an artist-photographer? Of course, he was both. In these first two shots, we have an example of each. The photograph of the school documents the new building and was a nice gift to give to the convent for their archives. The photograph of the town and seafront has the composition of a master painter. Father Browne photographed as both documenter and artist, and the 42,000 negatives he left behind prove that these two roles are not mutually exclusive.
He was also, at times, a mountain goat: the photograph of the Wicklow Lighthouse (page 64) is proof of that. It was no mean feat to reach the point where he took this shot, and had we moved any further to our right we would have fallen off the cliff into the wild sea below. As the wind howled in a disconcerting swirl, I considered that allowing for erosion, I was perhaps closer to death than had been the man himself, but I fear the photograph belies this. Taken 86 years apart, the rock formations remain identical, and if there has been any erosion, it is minimal.
The act of putting my eye over the eye of this great photographer increased awareness of his technique, which I believe through constant use became a natural working part of his mind. Whenever Father Browne took a photograph straight on, not from above or below, it was only because he knew this offered the finest result. I suspect his clothes got dirty often as he lay on damp ground to add a few more degrees to the angle of a shot, and have little doubt he risked limb, if not life, to gain extra height and drama. He lived at an exciting time for photography, starting with the nitrate film Kodak box camera he received as a gift aged 17, to the Plaubel Makina he returned with from Germany in 1920, to various 35mm cameras as they became available, including the Zeiss Contax I and II, a Super Nettel and a Leica.
Bear in mind also that he had been badly injured in the First World War, a fact not evident in the physicality of some of his post-war photography escapades. Between the restrictions of camera technology and his own health, I was in awe following in his footsteps with my digital camera, and with no such war wounds of my own.
Perhaps the most unusual location we visited was Shelton Abbey (page 90), now an open prison. Once a private estate, it hasn’t suffered for the dramatic change of use, with the impact of its grandeur intact and the beautifully kept house and grounds a credit to all who reside therein. If pictures tell a story, then Shelton Abbey is an example of how they don’t always tell the whole of it. When Father Browne took his photograph in 1946, the splendour he captured belied that within five years, the then-owner’s financial difficulties meant he would sell the abbey and grounds to the Irish state. Likewise now, as an open prison, the grand but impassive exterior gives nothing away about the life of the occupants behind the many windows. Finding the abbey was tricky, and involved some ordnance surveying of a terrain map of the area. It isn’t highlighted by satnav or signage until you are almost upon it. It is not, however, open to the public and we were granted permission to visit the exterior only, on the basis that we were taking photographs for this book.
Of course, linear time and the deadline for this book marched on, and so to our next stop, Powerscourt Waterfall (page 106). Please do not use technology to find Powerscourt Waterfall, or you will get lost. Go old-school and look for signposts or ask for directions. At the waterfall, Father Browne took a photograph of a man sitting with his back to us, and so we set about doing the same. But the landscape close to the waterfall has changed utterly, and where a tree trunk once sat in 1933, now is all rock. Slippery rock! To get our stand-in onto a suitable but safe rock, and into the correct position, was hair-raising, and I don’t recommend anyone tries to do this. The stand-in as it happens was my assistant Ruaidhrí, who is my son, so there was considerable inner conflict between the mother and the photographer who wanted the shot! I wondered had Father Browne the priest had the same conflict with Father Browne the photographer, and if his subject, in contemplating the waterfall, was also dreading the slippery clamber back to dry land.
The next shot was the nearby Dargle Glen (page 110 and cover of book), where we endeavoured to recreate the oldest photograph in the book. Father Browne’s beautiful, mystical idyll was taken 110 years ago. It is quite a stretch to claim we took this in the same spot, but we tried. Trees have grown and fallen, rocks have shattered and collapsed into the water; it’s impossible to know after over a century of natural change. But the rock formation behind the figure in the 2020 photograph has a similar semi-circular shape to the tall formation in the 1910 photograph, and the sapling in the older shot could be the mature tree in the newer one.
In order to replicate Father Browne’s 1926 photograph, ‘Deserted Promenade, Bray’ (page 23), I travelled to Bray very early one Saturday morning. I was correct in thinking most people would be tucked up in bed at that hour, but Father Browne’s photograph included a family walking towards him. What to do? I stood on the deserted promenade with the printout of Father Browne’s photograph in one hand and the camera in the other, all around me bereft of human life. Then, serendipitously, I spotted a family walking across the grass from the road to the prom. I asked if I could take their photo for this book, and was delighted when they agreed. The only instruction I gave them was to walk towards me on the prom. As they did, I took multiple shots.
It is uncanny how the postures of two of the children are the same in both promenade photographs. The names of the children in the 2020 photograph are Matilda and Mabel. One could walk a long way to find children today with names more suited to Father Browne’s time. It is as if he was there in this double-exposure across a century.
Praise for this book:
This book is a delight. Nicely designed and Paula T Nolan kept up the standard of the original shots very well. It’s a very pleasing turn-the-page book. Glad to have it.
— Eoghan Nolan, Think & Son and Brand Artillery, 22 October 2020
Written by William T McCartney, I came on board wearing many hats: research assistant for facts, archival documents and photographs; graphic designer; proofreader; image permissions and ultimately writer of an Epilogue.
Using the National Library, I was able to access notebooks from the 1916 Rising, and photographs through their online archive. Permission was sought and granted. Other archival research led to the National Newspaper Archives, and it was these that led to my writing an Epilogue on the role of the Irish and British press media in the slur on the character of Michael Mallin.
Michael Mallin was Chief of Staff of the Irish Citizen’s Army, right hand man to Michael Collins. He was First in Command of the Stephen’s Green Garrison during Easter Week 1916. Transcripts of his trial notes only became available 100 years later, and in them it is claimed he said he had no knowledge of the plans for the Rising, leading to ‘told’ reputational damage, to wit, he was a coward and wanted to avoid execution. The book makes the case that this inclusion in the transcript of his trial was not his words, but added by another in order to implicate Countess Markievich as the First in Command – the only way Prime Minister Asquith would have agreed to her execution.
This book became a huge labour of love for me, as the author’s enthusiasm was contagious and ultimately I became dedicated to clearing the name of a man whose character, once you research it, was not of the type to be cowardly whatsoever. Apart from which, he signed letters from prison ‘First in Command’…
All of the archival material for this book came from the Irish Jesuit Archives. When the book, the brainchild of our publisher Cecilia West, reached our schedule I contacted Damien Burke, Archivist, to see if he might have any material. I did not hold out much hope, believing if there was any material it would be well-known. So to my surprise, and even his surprise, he had. A veritable treasure trove. And so it was we put aside half a day, and I took photographs of most of the material.
These I gifted to the Irish Jesuit Archives.
Myself and Damien worked together to pick the best material for the Introduction to the book. It was such a great pleasure to be this close to books and notebooks and letters that were owned by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
The Corpus Poetaru has notations in the margins made by Hopkins. In his bible he has a pressed petal. Nothing brings a person to life so much as the treasures they left behind, carefully managed in a good archive.
Raphael’s World by Michael Collins came to my desk with so many photo suggestions but no copyright clearance. Many of the images were in the public domain either by dent of age or through Creative Commons image rights, but many required emails and phone calls to Italian museums and churches, so it was a rather time consuming task. Thankfully the author used some of his own photographs as well, but of course even this doesn’t necessarily mean permission to use, so research had to be done to ensure clearance, for example, from the Vatican museum.
It was worth it in the end, and the book was very well received. I have worked with Michael Collins a few times, and we collaborate well. He comes up with some excellent ideas for books and has endless enthusiasm.
Fold out cover facing title page.
We Remember Maynooth was edited by Salvador Ryan and John-Paul Sheridan. It was with the latter I spend hours on campus in Maynooth photographing archival material and scanning hundreds of photographs. Another day was spent taking photographs for the book. The following is some page spreads, showcasing some of Maynooth’s own archival material (the library, the notes from a meeting and the ‘cartoon’) and some of the photographs I took around the campus.
This book thankfully did not require permissions as the college owned all the material bar my images. On completion, I gave a gift of dozens of photographs to the Maynooth College Archives for their own use in perpetuity.
