Have just returned from a 4 day stay in Dublin with a cohort of students from Coventry and was blown away by all of the awesome things happening around the photobook and photography in Dublin and during our visit to Belfast…
I wanted to say a huge thanks to all at the Gallery of Photography in Dublin who made us feel most welcome and introduced us to the Photo Album of Ireland project, something which brought up some interesting discussions about curation, narrative, context and the changing face of the digital album. Big thanks to Tanya, Darragh, Trish and Maeve for their time.
From here we went to The Library Project, only 200 meters from the gallery in the Temple Bar area. The project is half shop, half library, all awesome. We spent a great deal of time pouring over the various books for sale and those that had been kindly donated for people to see and touch and engage with. This I suppose was the most refreshing aspect of the project – the library space was most welcoming and with a sofa and table meant that you could research and reflect for hours without feeling obtrusive. Thanks go to Sinead and Ángel for speaking about the project and for their hospitality.
A coach to Belfast Exposed for the day seemed a fair piece but was well worth it as we were privileged to hear Ciara speak about the Tom Wood exhibition as well as to introduce the students to the history of the gallery and it’s important voice in photography. As it happened, on the same day, Anthony Luvera, a previous BX resident was speaking to second year students at Coventry University. Hannah had kindly allowed the 28 or so students the opportunity to also take part in a great 30 minute book making workshop run by Lewis Rankin – the results were pretty staggering considering the purposefully imposed restrictions in material, time and resource – a workshop we will look to experiment further with in Coventry.
Aside from the above there was time to fit in a few beers with Paul Geraghty who is doing interesting things with the picturk platform and on the last day a chat with Agata Stoinska and Karolina Schlagner from Blow magazine who have a whole bunch of interesting things line up and passion to go with it.
Malaga news from Jose Gallardo!
We have created a photobook club south of Andalusia in the town of Malaga, finally we have called “Photobook club Malaga”, we are still organizing site for meeting, although we already have had some meetings. Our philosophy is to create a space dedicated to the study and dissemination photography book in our city Málaga, our link in Facebook is found here.
