Mosney - Photo ID Explores Identity
Photographers and scientists explored identity in the thought-provoking exhibition Photo-ID in Norwich, as part of Contemporary Art Norwich 2009. It featured the work of 10 specially commissioned photographers from around the globe. The entire photography exhibition was created for the Norfolk Contemporary Arts Society by former UEA academic Keith Roberts, also a science author, with sponsorship from the Wellcome Foundation.
As part of this commission, I got the opportunity to photograph Mosney which was once a Butlin's holiday camp in County Meath, Ireland. It was a popular escape for many Irish families from the 1950's to the 1980's, until package holidays and cheap flights led to its decline in the nineties. In 2000, it became a refugee centre and houses around nine hundred asylum seekers from all over the world. The residents exist in limbo, within the walls of a deteriorating, kitsch resort as they wait on a decision that determines their fate
The holiday camp was a familiar backdrop and playground for locals in the village nearby, and I spent my summers there during my childhood and teenage years. We often gate-crashed the resort to avail of the amusements and amenities, until we were old enough to form the framework of cheap labour. It was a surreal environment even then, but it opened a world of opportunities and adventures, that shaped my own identity.
The work was featured in a series of books titled: Where We Are, published by Aad in 2014.
Where we are
A lot has been said, reported, written and told about Ireland in the last 5 years. Soundbites, headlines, rhetoric. A single phrase sums it up 'We are where we are' - and still we're left wondering; so where are we?'
Where we are is a project that celebrates the strength and diversity of contemporary Irish photography while showing different perspectives, stories, places and people that make up modern Ireland. Maybe if we stop talking, and look, we can get a better sense of where we are and where we might be going.
Mosney - Photo ID Explores Identity
