In the next #UrbanHistory seminar, Dr Erika Hanna (@ABearPursuesMe) will be speaking on her most recent book ‘Snapshot Stories: Visuality, Photography, and the Social History of Ireland, 1922-2000’. 15.00-16.00 BST, Friday 21 May. Book your place here: https://eventbrite.co.uk/e/urban-history-seminar-series-snapshot-stories-tickets-150764136591
Dr Hanna’s recent monograph looks at photography and the social history of Ireland in the twentieth century. During the twentieth century, men and women across Ireland picked up cameras, photographing days out at the beach, composing views of Ireland’s cities and countryside, and recording political events as they witnessed them. Indeed, while foreign photographers often still focused on the image of Ireland as bucolic rural landscape, Irish photographers-snapshotter and professional alike-were creating and curating photographs which revealed more complex and diverse images of Ireland. This paper explores these stories by examining a diverse array of photographic sources, including family photograph albums, studio portraits, the work of photography clubs and community photography initiatives, alongside the output of those who took their cameras into the streets to record violence and poverty. The paper will show how Irish men and women used photography in order to explore their sense of self and society and examines how we can use these images to fill in the details of Ireland’s social history.
Available from OUP
Urban History Group 