The Magdalen Laundries were infamous institutions run by the Catholic Church since the 19th century not just in Ireland but also in most European countries. However only in Ireland did they remain in operation into the seventies and eighties of the 20th century. Homes for so-called "fallen women", they housed hundreds upon hundreds of girls who were considered immoral and wild, pregnant unmarried women or those who had concealed their pregnancies and lost their babies in childbirth.
Often the girls were brought there by family members or priests. If they arrived pregnant their babies were instantly taken away after they were born and put up for adoption. They were told that they were a danger to society and sinners like Mary Magdalene, that they should do penance and pray for forgiveness of their sins. Abandoned by their families many women would stay in the laundries for the rest of their lives.
One of the laundries in Dublin run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity was the last to be closed. It was on Sean McDermot Street and until as late as 1996, forty women had still lived in the institution and many continued to stay there, unable to return to an independent way of existence, until they were re-housed approximately sixteen years ago.
The building had already fallen into disrepair when I was given permission to go in and photograph the rooms where the women had lived, the dining halls, corridors and recreational spaces. It is hard to describe the utter feeling of desolation, the sense of despair and isolation that was palpable everywhere. It seemed to permeate the very wallpaper and floorboards of the place. There was little evidence of the inmates, hardly anything remained of the women's individuality but what was there, a name tag on a door, a small colourful wall hanging, or a piece of bric-a-brac somewhere on a shelf was heart-breakingly poignant. Documenting the Magdalen building, which seemed filled with shadowy presences and the indescribable sadness of so many unlived lives, was important for me despite being emotionally difficult.
What I wished to set out to do with my photographs was on the one hand to make a documentation of the cruelty and savagery of the powerful over the powerless, and on the other to carry out an act of salvage. I wished to transform memory into remembrance in an attempt to restore dignity and humanity to these women who had been robbed of both by a bigotted and misogynistic Catholic Church.
Seven Stanzas for the Magdalenes
for Ethna O’Regan
While they were washing the stains
from the poor’s dirty linen
I wrote in Miss Shannon’s class
An Old Boot Tells Its Story;
while they were scrubbing the sweat
of sex, of fever, of blood,
the marks of labour, of birth,
of afterbirth, weeping,
flushing it all down the drain,
we recited the seven
times table, the mysteries
glorious and sorrowful,
cad a dhéanfaimid feasta?
the tri-coloured ribbon-o.
In two big pillow cases
I’d lug the family wash
along Sean McDermott Street;
or in the new baby’s pram
curtains and blankets and rugs
wobbled over the cobbles
the year I turned eleven.
I thought they were nearly nuns
if I thought at all about
the sad ones checking the wash,
their hands chapped raw and mottled,
their cropped hair, their hickiness;
how one with the bluest eyes
petted my head, said good girl
good girl, when the one in charge
wasn’t looking. My world was
dark and light, fearsome, dazzling
by turns. I can feel her hand
on my head, smell carbolic
and bleach, hear the undersong
of clicking rosary beads.
The Republic was young then,
we thought at last we were free.
With hindsight I write this down,
the convent closed, the Magdalenes
still without justice and peace:
they turn in their unmarked graves
or take their cause to the streets.
I roam the rooms of the past
where dust settles on the floors,
the statues have tumbled down
and with them our foolish faith
in plaster and paint and stone.
I believe in this one truth
light sings to the breaking dark.
Paula Meehan
My first photobook ‘Beyond Reach’ was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2019.
Some years ago I began exploring where the border wall used to surround West-Berlin, turning it into a virtual island within the GDR. It was an intricate border system, of concrete wall slabs, mainly within the city, metal fences, barbed wire, a death strip from between twenty to seventy meters’ width surveilled by 302 watchtowers, a battery of lanterns on high masts, alarm signals, 1150 watchdogs and roughly 2000 guards doing duty daily. It was an almost impenetrable barrier.
Today there are very few remnants of either the wall, the barbed wire or the watch towers, and what is left of the wall has become a tourist attraction. If one now embarks on a journey on foot or by bike along the 91 mile-long so-called Mauerweg (the wall trail) along the former border between West Berlin and Brandenburg, one is struck by the abundance of lush growth and woodland around the circumference of the city. This is due to the current policy of letting nature take over where the death strip used to be.
But as I travelled along the trail I now and again came across memorials to people – often male, often young – who lost their lives trying to cross the border from East to West. The poignancy of these reminders of a now almost forgotten past motivated me to explore further and let my photographic record of the landscape in all its innocence tell the story. It is with awe and sadness that I went along the Mauerweg and I wish to dedicate this work to the memory of the victims of a painful history.
Demise en Scène is work that delves into the vernacular and commercial visual sphere surrounding the holiday experience. Many travellers are compelled by the futile quest of capturing essences of natural beauty that live up to their holiday experience. In this work, the artist is looking the other way, unravelling the mechanics operating in perceptions of amusement and pleasure.
The work has a resonance with Massimo Vitali’s photographs of densely populated leisure sites, but where Vitali’s high detail and depth-of-field casts everyone as extras, more than often the images have emphasising hooks, standing out from the broad visual components – more comfortably recognisable to and desirable by the viewer from their amassed cultural capital.
O’Regan’s work contains these Barthian ‘puncta’ as playful ambiguities – almost as if staged. It is as if the walls to a cinematic sound-stage have fallen away, exposing the lie of the leisure-drome. In the tourist realm these imaginary walls, ceilings and floors are really just the frame of the camera lens. Here, the skill of the artist has zoomed out or panned beyond the range of brochure images, in which the tourist begins their holiday.
Monster Truck Gallery, Dublin, 2010
‘ I can be far from glad in remembering myself to have been glad, and far from sad when I recall my past sadness. Without fear I remember how at a particular time I was afraid…I remember with joy a sadness that has passed and with sadness a lost joy.’
St. Augustine (X. xiv)
In times of crisis, a kind of inertia can take place as if your world is suspended, lying in wait for something to happen or for things to change. Life comes to a standstill so to speak, frozen in time, unable to move forward, not knowing where to go from here. One coping mechanism is to tend towards creating order in our surroundings. However, the unpredictability of nature repeatedly undermines our attempts to control it. For the most part, we see the world not as it is but as we’d like it to be. That any moment now, things may change is an optimistic outlook that is held by many to help maintain ones sanity through uncertain times.
On my wanderings, I am frequently surprised by happenstance scenarios, ones that we often pass by – or they us – unnoticed or acknowledged. When I come upon them, they strike me almost as if they have been staged, I document these found slices of life and then move on. All around I see eccentricity in the marks that we make and leave behind, borne out of our need to contain the unsettling open-endedness of our existence. Rather than being mere depictions of the banality of urban life, the photographs seek to dig deeper, tapping into our collective psyche by navigating the strange terrain of our inherent, yet futile, quest for absolute certainty.
These images were taken on residency in Madrid,
during the 1st official Lockdown,
due to the rapid spread of Covid-19.
It is strange to think back when Madrid was one of the first major Epicentres,
and now,
nine months later,
it is everywhere.
As the virus knows nothing of time,
it just keeps on doing what it does,
spreading,
killing and sowing grief.
This invisible threat has kept most of us in a weary state of suspension,
turning to our screens,
looking forward to the day when that lonely feeling of dread and distance,
is gone.
All we can do for the time being,
is wait,
and remind ourselves,
how fortunate we are that we can still draw breath.
Ethna O’Regan December 2020
This work was made during the first lockdown in Madrid 2020, the third lockdown in Berlin 2021 and in the midst of the Omicron surge, the fifth wave in San Diego, California 2021/22. The three part series is Shelter In Place I, II and III and is also accompanied by thoughts written down in relation to what was happening throughout the course of the pandemic.
The photographs originated during a time of unease and anxiety and aim to show the feeling of disconnectedness and isolation I experienced during the height of the pandemic. On my solitary walks, various things and physical features of the landscape seemed to connect with and reflect that inner state of disorientation and loss.
They predicted this harsh winter, a 3rd Lockdown, but nobody knew the toll it would bring.
Amidst so much loss, even more, psychologically, financially, and for some no water, no power.
Yet Abbott in Texas declares ‘We’re OPEN’.
When we’re in a pandemic within a pandemic,
B.11.7, B.1351, B. 1.427/429, P1,
While new variants emerge, some vaccines are being blocked, between petty power games and rising racism, are many of us just full of spite, instead of all things reasonable.
As the tides of frustration build inside, I wonder about the thought of how to begin again.
Ethna O’Regan February 2021
This work was made during the first lockdown in Madrid 2020, the third lockdown in Berlin 2021 and in the midst of the Omicron surge, the fifth wave in San Diego, California 2021/22. The three part series is Shelter In Place I, II and III and is also accompanied by thoughts written down in relation to what was happening throughout the course of the pandemic.
The photographs originated during a time of unease and anxiety and aim to show the feeling of disconnectedness and isolation I experienced during the height of the pandemic. On my solitary walks, various things and physical features of the landscape seemed to connect with and reflect that inner state of disorientation and loss.
After the Delta storm, now the Omicron surge arrives to our shores,
A fifth wave.
And with it, the increasing polarisation of people and their differing opinions on what constitutes Freedom and the encroachment thereof. Misinformation and mistrust in Science add to the confusion and the antagonism.
Will the debate over civil liberties lead to a civil war in the U.S.?
One would hope that reason will prevail in the years ahead.
Entering into year three of Covid and we’re still caught in this web of grief, change and uncertainty.
Along with a warming planet, erupting volcanoes under sea and on land, unpredictable weather systems causing chaos,
There seems to be no end in sight of bad news, though there is a glimmer of hope regarding the dwindling severity of Omicron.
And perhaps, we have learned something from the past two years and will make the effort to find our way back to a place of wonder and appreciation for this planet,
The only one we have.
Ethna O’Regan January 2022
This work was made during the first lockdown in Madrid 2020, the third lockdown in Berlin 2021 and in the midst of the Omicron surge, the fifth wave in San Diego, California 2021/22. The three part series is Shelter In Place I, II and III and is also accompanied by thoughts written down in relation to what was happening throughout the course of the pandemic.
The photographs originated during a time of unease and anxiety and aim to show the feeling of disconnectedness and isolation I experienced during the height of the pandemic. On my solitary walks, various things and physical features of the landscape seemed to connect with and reflect that inner state of disorientation and loss.
