Irlande 66 / 69 – Images of Ireland in the late 1960s

Two young Belgian photographers, one in the summer of 1966, the other in 1969, set off for Ireland to complete their final year photography studies. When the first, Guy Jungblut (alias Yellow), arrived in Dublin, he discovered a city more or less like the one James Joyce had wanted to preserve in Ulysses. The second, Jacques Piraprez (alias Nutan), followed in his footsteps, documenting Ireland in the late 60s.

Their black-and-white photographs, presented indiscriminately, show an Ireland, and more particularly its capital, Dublin, fifty years after the 1916 uprising, still far removed from the way of life on the continent, and from the swinging London of the Beatles.

In meticulously constructed portraits, we see and can almost feel the world of the poor in Dublin in the 1960s: The women, with their sharp eyes and clenched teeth, determined, with their shopping bags, accordion stockings and shawls; the men absorbed in reading the newspapers and the vague-eyed drinkers in the old pubs; the drunkards sleeping rough in the courtyards of the blocks of flats; the cattle whose flanks bear the mark of the Crown - ‘Roast beef for old England’ - being driven along North Circular Road, towards the Slieve Bawn cargo ship...

This Notebook of around 200 photographs, the work of two young Belgians from a school geared towards documentary photography and live portraits, was published in 2016, one hundred years after the Rising.

Check out the article of The Irish Times here.