Peacebuilding a shared Northern Irish society
SmugMug+Flickr: An esprit de corps? by Allan LEONARD 21 April 2018 Flickr has announced that it is being acquired by SmugMug. At least that provides an answer to the question of what would happen next, after Flickr was spared the sunsetting list but not endorsed like Yahoo’s purchase of Tumblr. And a better outcome than... Continue Reading →
Film review: Photo City by Allan LEONARD 13 April 2018 Photo City is a documentary film by John Murphy and Traolach Ó Murchú, about the story of Rochester, New York, becoming the Silicon Valley of photography, with the clustering of image-based companies such as Xerox, Bausch and Lomb, and Kodak. And how this industry has... Continue Reading →
Ephemera to direct our future: Introduction to the Peter Moloney Collection by Allan LEONARD 10 April 2018 Peter Moloney, who collected Troubles-related ephemera for over 50 years, presented a personal lecture on how it began, why he decided to donate it all to the Tower Museum, and how he’ll keep on collecting. The negotiation to... Continue Reading →
Coming to terms with our interdependencies #GFA20 by Allan LEONARD 10 April 2018 On the 20th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, it is easy to neglect the peace process that preceded it. My reference point is the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, because I learned about the efforts of then Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald the year before,... Continue Reading →
Photo Detectives: An exhibition of community-researched Irish photo history by Allan LEONARD 6 January 2018 Photo Detectives is an exhibition by the National Library of Ireland (NLI) at its National Photographic Archive site in Dublin, of a set of archive images that online Flickr users have assisted with research and providing illuminating further information. The... Continue Reading →
The "Public" Life of PhotographsDo we understand a photograph differently if we encounter it in a newspaper rather than a book? In a photo album as opposed to framed on a museum wall? The “Public” Life of Photographs explores how the various ways that photographs have been made available to the public have influenced their... Continue Reading →
Mr Ulster buys a painting30 November 2017 For my 50th birthday, I wanted a special gift, something that I would always attribute to that milestone event. I have long appreciated visual arts; I even took a few art history modules at university. I dabbled with drawing, which I enjoyed, but quickly realised that getting competent... Continue Reading →
Mr Turner’s apples by Allan LEONARD 27 September 2017 The Allison Collection held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) consists of about 1,550 photographs and 34 volumes from Allison Photographic Studios between circa 1900 and 1950. The studios were established by Herbert Thackwray Allison, who came to Ireland in 1881 with his... Continue Reading →
A victim from the inside out: Photographic exhibition of Maurice Hobson by Allan LEONARD 6 September 2017 Maurice Hobson was a 17-year-old pupil at Dungannon Royal School when a bomb blew up in Market Square, while he was waiting to board the school bus. A car jack hit him on the left side of his... Continue Reading →
Solace or detachment in our journeys? Translink photography exhibition by Allan LEONARD 9 August 2017 Passengers who have travelled through Belfast Central Station this summer have had an opportunity to meet others captured in photographs by students from Ulster University’s School of Art. The public exhibition of large prints mounted onto easels is named “Journey”,... Continue Reading →
Poetry & Place: Photographic interpretations of Louis MacNeiceby Allan LEONARD25 July 2017 Women of the Ards peninsula worked with community artist, Jane McComb, to use photography not only to document social, maritime, and agricultural legacy of the area, but also to give interpretation to the writings of poet, Louis MacNeice (1907–1963), who is buried locally... Continue Reading →
Conflicting Images: Ulster Museum by Allan LEONARD 26 July 2017 As part of its Collecting the Troubles and Beyond initiative, the Ulster Museum currently has an exhibition called Conflicting Images: Photography during the Northern Irish Troubles. In a loose chronology there are 140 images from a variety of photographers. International photojournalists arrived with increased disturbances.... Continue Reading →