A Portrait of a Village (1996 - 2016)
Laytown, Co.Meath Ireland
In the summer of 1996 I began photographing the small, seaside village where I grew up, a year before I moved to London. I wanted to capture daily life as I knew it; the people, the surroundings and the essence of provincial life. I wanted to process the world that I had known so far. Although this was the environment that shaped me, I didn’t share the desire to remain. I wanted to experience more than village life had to offer and to see what lay beyond the confines of a small neighbourhood.
I continued to photograph every time I returned home, over a period of twenty years. For most of this time, little changed. Time passes, people carry on, and the cycle of life continues. Although there is an underlying feeling that ‘this is it’, there’s a comfort and charm in close-knit communities. The familiarity of local faces and characters, a sense of belonging and a safety in the known.
Fast forward to 2026, the village is a very different place. The people in the community didn't need to move to a new world, the new world came to them. These images reflect a particular moment in Irish society, which unbeknownst, was on the cusp of a permanent shift in our culture.
