After the Race: motorsport in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, 1940s

The Phoenix Park’s association with motorsport started as early as 1903. The Gordon Bennett Cup Race which took place in Ireland in that year is cited as the background for James Joyce’s short story After the Race. Joyce used motor racing to lampoon the aspirations of Dublin’s social climbing nouveau riche. It was one of fifteen stories that appeared in Dubliners and this month marks the 100th anniversary of its publication. A reimagining and rewriting of these stories, Dubliners 100, will be launched today.

This lady was photographed in the Phoenix Park sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Due to petrol rationing racing was suspended during the Second World War and did not re-commence until the late 1940s. On the subject of rationing, I was delighted to have my article ‘Coupons, Clothing and Class: The Rationing of Dress in Ireland, 1942-1948’ published in the latest issue of Costume.

The fashions worn by this women indicate that the photo was taken towards the end of the 1940s or in the early 1950s. Her loose fitting, midi length shift dress and matching jacket were typical of the post-war period. Her stylish outfit reflects the comparative wealth of those involved in motor sport and mirrors the glamour and allure alluded to by Joyce in After the Race.

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Surreal Kodak moments: Irish-American tourist snapshots from 1971

I love the colours in these early 70s holiday snapshots which I purchased from an online seller recently. There is something very evocative about this Kodak colour process with its strong red and brown hues. 

The photographs were taken by Irish-American tourists in 1971 and include the slightly surreal image of an A and B pay phone. This pay phone system required the caller to contact an operator and if for some reason the call didn’t go through they could hit the ‘B’ button to return their coins. I wonder if the photograph was taken in an airport and that the green phone is perhaps a courtesy phone? I cannot make out the headlines on the newspaper which might have provided clues as to the time of year. 

I’ve identified the clock tower in the background of this photograph as that on Waterford Quay which was built in 1881. The man is the foreground appears to be enjoying his holiday. 

Upon their return to the United States, the travellers chose to photograph the items they had purchased during their trip to England and Ireland. It provides a great insight into the types of souvenirs which were popular with tourists during the period. I recognise several brands including an Irish Wade pin dish and a leprechaun figure which looks very like those made by Crolly in Donegal. They also bought plenty of linen teacloths and some strange looking records.

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Rock snapshots: landscape photographs of Antrim and Down, 1920s

I have featured images from this Northern Irish album in a previous post. The photographs were taken by H.J. Malcomson from Belfast with a Kodak Vest Pocket camera between 1925 and 1932. Most snapshot albums are filled with images of family events and occasions, however, this photographer had artistic aspirations. Even though the prints are tiny (6.5cm x 4.5cms) the photographer has succeeded in creating stark and abstract images of large scale landscape features in Antrim and Down.

 

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Stylish lady on a Dublin street, 1948 snapshot

This glamorous lady was photographed as she walked by the railings of Trinity College in 1948. Her outfit adheres to the styles of the day: a black Mandarin hat complete with spotted veil; trapeze swing coat; clutch bag; gloves and a large leaf-shaped brooch. All were the height of fashion for 1948!

The handwriting on the print adds to rather than detracts from the photograph and although it is not a perfectly composed image it gives a real sense of Dublin in 1948 and shows how clothes were worn and fashions adopted on the street.

To get an idea of what else was happening in the city and a flavour of the times, I searched the newspapers for today’s date in 1948. The headlines were full of the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Conference and the ‘Palestine Problem’. According to Seán Ó Faoláin ‘Raidió Éireann was starved of finances’ and another article covered ‘Suggestions to improve Dublin Traffic.’

The Grafton Cinema was showing Spencer Tracey and Mickey Rooney in Boys’ Town and  the Carlton Cinema advertised the following: ‘Gorgeous and Gay! Exotic and Exciting! Lovely glamorous Yvonne de Carlo with George Brent, Brod Crawford, Andy Devine and Arthur Treacher in Slave Girl – dazzling Technicolor! Come to the 3.30 show – house booked out for tonight!’ If you didn’t want to go to the cinema there was always ‘Midget Car Racing’ at Santry Speedway or horseracing at Baldoyle.

Miss Louise Brough won the Ladies’ Singles Championship at Wimbledon and there were advertisements for rubber boots, sandals, pilgrimages to Lough Derg, Andrews Liver Salts, Elastic Stockings and Flak DDT offered to ‘Knock down that louse.’

Speaking of street style, the Where were you? team are putting on an exhibition of images from their Dublin youth culture book. It is part of the amazing Photo Ireland Festival 2012 and  is at the Lighthouse Cinema, Smithfield from Saturday 7^th July.

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Beautiful Victorian Graphics: Irish cartes-de-visite designs from 1860s and 70s

This post is about photography but it doesn’t include any photographs! The graphics used by Victorian photographers on the backs of their cartes-de-visite were often as interesting as their photographs.

The earliest were backed by copperplate signatures or simple coloured logos. In later decades, Victorian ornamentation intertwined elaborate fonts around stylised flowers and patterns. Art Nouveau influences are to be found in the early 20th century before a return to plainer modernist styles in the 1920s and 30s. The backs I have featured here are all from Irish studios of the 1860s and 70s.

During this period printers often used different coloured inks for photographers’ logos and the ones featured here include an attractive aquamarine, chocolate brown and indigo.

Several of the logos include line drawings of the large box cameras which were used in studios during this period. In addition to the expected camera motif various signs and symbols recur such as the sun and artists’ easels and palettes. Palettes are visible on three of the Irish cards emphasising the artistic nature of photographers.

In attempt to give their studios prestige and pedigree two of the above studios have adopted mottoes. Adolphe of Grafton Street uses ‘Nunquam non paratus’  meaning ‘never unprepared.’ and Thomas North, also of Grafton Street used ‘animo et fide’ which means ‘courageously and faithfully’. One wonders how much courage was required to run a photographic studio during the period?

Other heraldic devices include the belt and buckle which encircles the box camera on the carte by Adolphe and the griffin like creature which appears on the example from A.D. Roche in Cork.

Early designs were probably commissioned from local printers using designs copied from other cards. As the industry grew and progressed specialised firms, based mainly in France and Germany, mass-produced cards which could be customised to include the local studio details. An example by one such company, Marion, was used by Hugh Kerr from Northern Ireland. Roger Vaughan has written a very detailed guide to dating the cards produced by this company which is available here and shows that the card above was from the company’s earlier period of the 1860s or 70s.

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Photography in James Joyce’s ‘Dubliners’

Dublin City Libraries have chosen James Joyce’s Dubliners to be the featured title in their initiative One City, One Book. I’ve mentioned the book before in earlier posts, however, the project brought to mind several images from my collection which remind me of Joyce’s references to photography within the short stories. I love Joyce’s descriptions of interiors, particularly in The Dead and the following photographs feature similar subjects and conjure up the same atmosphere as occurs in the stories.

From The Dead:  “Her photograph stood before the pierglass. She held an open book on her knees and was pointing out something in it to Constantine who, dressed in a man-o-war suit, lay at her feet.”

The man-o-war suit mentioned in the story was a version of the then popular sailor suits worn by little boys during the mid to late nineteenth-century. The trousers in this variety were long legged and were often worn with a wide-brimmed straw hat like the example below from the Werner studio of Grafton Street. Joyce himself was photographed as a young boy wearing a sailor suit.

From A Little Cloud: “It was Annie’s photograph. Little Chandler looked at it, pausing at the thin tight lips. She wore the pale blue summer blouse which he had brought her home as a present one Saturday … He looked coldly into the eyes of the photograph and they answered coldly. Certainly they were pretty and the face itself was pretty. But he found something mean in it. Why was it so unconscious and ladylike? The composure of the eyes irritated him. They repelled him and defied him: there was no passion in them, no rapture.”

I think the expression of the woman above matches that described by Joyce in the story ‘The Little Cloud’. Blouse and skirt combinations were very popular during the 1890s and 1900s – the period during which Joyce wrote Dubliners and when the story is set.

From Eveline: “And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Mary May Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:

‘He is in Melbourne now.’ ”

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Fashionable little girl, 1900s cabinet card from Cork City studio

This little girl was the height of fashion for the 1900s. All the mainstays from the decade are here: a sailor style tunic; soft leather ankle strap shoes; dark tights and a large floppy wide-brimmed hat. I particularly like the pleated skirt and the black cuffs and collar. The ostrich plume adds a finishing touch to her hat.

The use of the name ‘Berlin’ was not unusual. Many photographers alluded to being either French or German in attempt to give their studio some continental European cachet.  Thirty years earlier, a firm called Stevens ran a photographic studio from the same location in Patrick Street (see previous post on a carte-de-visite from the 1860s).  The larger cabinet card format which is used here allowed for more detail and a better view of the sitter’s features and expression. The wrought iron railings in the background; terrazzo flooring and fake ‘boulder’ make a very strong composition.

On a related topic, I’ll be talking about some of the fashion highlights of the Jacolette collection at the Gallery of Photography, Meeting House Square, this Wednesday, 11th April at 7 o’clock. Also on at the gallery is an exhibition of fashion photography organised in conjunction with the excellent Thread magazine.

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Baby Elizabeth Angelina Anna Stopford, Carte-de-visite, Cork, July 1869

The little girl on the pedestal was named Elizabeth Angelina Anna Stopford and she was born in Dublin in 1868. Her family subsequently moved to Cork where she was photographed with her crinoline-wearing mother, Lucy Rebecca Stopford (née Binney). Thanks to the online availability of Dublin church records, I was able to track down her baptism details.

The Stopfords were a military family and they resided at Eglantine, Mallow. The inscription on the back of the carte-de-visite shows that the photograph was taken in July 1869 and sent ‘to dear Willie with Lucy’s love.’

Unfortunately, Elizabeth died at the age of 22 in 1890. Other than these scant facts I know little about her life. A pretty extensive trawl through the national newspapers has revealed no death notice nor memorial. This was often the case with unmarried daughters or aunts especially if they had no property to bequeath. Perhaps, her passing was marked in the local newspapers?

The studio of Stevens is little known and doesn’t appear in Eddie Chandler’s Photography in Ireland : the Nineteenth Century. I love the mention of access through Francis Guy’s Stationery Hall. From a  perusal of the city’s street directories it looks like George F. Stevens’ business as a short-lived one, appearing in only one of the volumes made available through Cork City Library’s website: Slater’s National Commercial Directory of Ireland for 1870.

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‘Invalid Port’ available at R.J. Bolger’s, Bray, County Wicklow

Another workplace photograph, this time showing the staff outside R.J. Bolger’s grocer, 18 Main Street, Bray, County Wicklow. This image is very like a previous post which showed the workers at Hodgins and Sons, Nenagh, County Tipperary and it also dates from the 1930s.

The sign writing is excellent and you can just about glimpse the lace curtains in the upper windows. According to the 1901 census, Richard Joseph, lived over the shop with his wife, Lizzie May and two-year old daughter, Annie Mary.

What really captured my imagination was the elaborate window display which revealed the wide range of alcoholic beverages distributed by Gilbey’s wine merchants. These include Spey-royal scotch whiskey and my favourite, Invalid Port!

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Young Dublin cricketers, 1860s cartes by Lauder Brothers

These early cricket-related photographs show two brothers, David and John Drummond, the sons of the wealthy businessman and philanthropist David Drummond. The portraits were taken in the mid-1860s when the photographic trade was thriving and the Lauder Brothers ran studios on both Sackville Street and Westmoreland Street. I love the elaborate backdrop with the stairs stretching into the distance. The backs of the cartes give different addresses although it is obvious that both photographs were taken in the same studio and at the same time.

I have been able to trace what happened to little David who became a renowned physician in England. He was born in 1852 and his obituary even mentions his love of cricket! I am not too sure what became of John. Their Rathgar home was called Dunfillan House and the conservatory, commissioned by their father, was recently renovated with assistance from the Irish Georgian society.

Both boys are wearing quite fancy outfits which may or may not be part of their school or cricket uniforms – they attended Rathmines School. I was able to locate a newspaper report on a cricket match which took place in Bray the 1st of October 1867 and in which David played a major part: “Rathmines School C.C. brought its season to a close on Saturday last by winning two signal victories… At Bray the Second Eleven encountered Bray College C.C., and won by 131 runs, Mr. David Drummond scoring 40 … Mr Drummond’s bowling excited general admiration.”

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