The Peoples Portraits 1899 - 1918, (2018)

Amanda Dunsmore’s art practice employs longitudinal research processes. Through this process she discovered the source images for The Peoples Portraits 1899-1918 (2018), at the Northern Ireland Prison Service Training College at Woburn House in Millisle, Co. Down. Dating from the 1890’s, the original glass plate negatives contain both face-on and side-profile images, taken mainly at Armagh prison by two prison officers trained as photographers, P. Egan and M. Cronin. From the thousands of original photographs, Dunsmore selected and edited 100, which date from 1899 to 1918. All the individuals depicted lived at a time before the partition of Ireland, in 1921.

The Peoples Portraits 1899-1918, 2018. Installation view KEEPER exhibition at Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, 2018.
Installation view 'A Matter of Time', Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, 2024. Photographer Jed Niezgoda

The original negatives are glass, split double for a face on and side profile photographic documentation. The expressions vary, some amused, inquiring, sad, tired, resigned. These are photographic portraits and when you are aware of the context in which they were taken. With the distance of time, the negative associations connected to the prison context are lifted. Their humanity is reassigned through the perspective of the distance of time.

The Peoples Portraits 1899-1918, 2018. Installation view KEEPER exhibition at Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, 2018.
Installation view KEEPER solo exhibition at Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, 2018. Photographer Ros Kavanagh.

I am interested in time scales for civic reflection. This reflection uses points of time as markers usually in 20, 25, 50, 75 and 100 years. These numbers of time are distances that relate to a human life span. The last, the 100, is a distance that is (normally) out of an individual life time, a shift into the framing of history. Dunsmore, 2021.

The Peoples Portraits 1899-1918, 2018. Edition of 3, + 1 AP. Edition 1, Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin.