Fiona Kearney reflects on Jeanette Lowe’s exhibition at the National Photographic Archive, Temple Bar, Dublin, which paints an intimate portrait of the residents both past and present of Pearse House Dublin
Photography preserves and creates memories. We gather people together for the camera, smiling families and friends crammed into the frame, posing for posterity with happy faces. This image becomes the touchstone for all that happened beyond that one moment – the events, conversations, commotions and everyday activities – that unfold away from the camera lens.
In this way, pictures shape our present too, prompting us to recall certain moments from the wavering past in our minds. In Jeanette Lowe’s exhibition ‘Pearse House: Village in the City’ there is a sensitive exploration of the way in which photography provides personal and social records of place. Taking the inner city location of Pearse House flats where in the 1930s, her grandmother Bridget Ashmore was one of the first residents, the artist weaves bygone narratives with contemporary observation.
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