“An eloquent portrait of a long century of struggle in what was one of Europe’s poorest countries.” ―Publishers Weekly The first Irish photographs date from 1840, a year after Louis Daguerre announced his discovery of the photographic process. In the century that followed, Ireland was to know tragedy and triumph, bitter struggle and agonized compromise. The Great Famine killed over a million Irish poor between 1846 and 1851, and forced an even greater number to flee the horrors of their homeland. In the following decades, Irish political life was dominated by the struggle for land rights, for Home Rule, and ultimately for independence. These images do more than tell a gripping political story. They give an insight into a people, a landscape, and a lost way of life. They evoke the grandeur of life in the Big House, home and symbol of the Anglo-Irish elite. They reveal the hard labor of rural survival: cutting peat for fuel, fishing, and tilling the soil against an often harsh landscape. And they show the transforming impact of modernity, as industry, railways, and urban expansion slowly brought Ireland into a new era. 271 duotone illustrations

The Irish: A Photohistory

Arts & Photography

Kinealy, Christine

Sexton, Sean

Photography & Video

Thames&Hudson

A selection of Book-of-the-Month Club The first Irish photographs date from 1840. In the century that followed, Ireland was to know tragedy and triumph, bitter struggle and agonized compromise. Much of that experience, now remote, is brought to life here in images so powerful that they remind one of the miracle that photography once seemed. Ireland in 1840 was a subject nation. Its predominantly Catholic, Gaelic-speaking people were ruled from Westminster by a parliament that was largely Protestant, British, and drawn from a narrow land-owning elite. In the 1840s, photography in Ireland was the genteel hobby of the leisured Anglo-Irish landed class. The well-to-do subjects of the daguerrotype portraits of the 1840s peer with bemused expressions toward the mysterious contraption in front of them. It is a shock to realize that many such images were taken as the Irish starved: between 1846 and 1851, over a million poor people died in the Great Famine, while an even greater number emigrated. In the following decades, Irish political life was dominated by the struggle for land rights, for Home Rule, and finally for independence. As that story unfolds in this enthralling visual history, we encounter inspirational leaders and impatient rebels, and their campaigns of persuasion and violence. We see too the injustices that inspired them, above all the mass eviction of destitute peasants from their homes and lands. And we see how the march of Irish nationalism was thwarted not only by British resistance but also by militant Unionismthe equally passionate desire of Ulster Protestants to remain part of the United Kingdom. Yet these images do more than tell a gripping political story. They give an insight into a people, a landscape, and a lost way of life. They capture the hard labor of rural survival: cutting peat for fuel, gathering seaweed, fishing, and tilling the soil, against the magnificence of the often-harsh Irish landscape. And they show the grandeur, elegance, and complacency of life in the Big House, home and symbol of the doomed Anglo-Irish elite. 271 photographs in color and duotone.

The Irish: A Photohistory, 1840-1940

A stunning collection of portraits of vegetables, fruits, and flowers by a turn-of-the-twentieth-century visionary
In 1981, at Bermondsey Market in London, Sean Sexton, the Irish-born photographic collector, chanced upon the gelatin silver prints of photographer Charles Jones. Dating from the turn of the century, these beguiling studio “portraits” of tulips and sunflowers, onions and turnips, plums and pears are skillfully executed and startling in their originality. Shot as close-ups, with long exposure and spare composition, the works anticipate by decades the later achievements of modernist masters.
This volume presents Jones’s photography in sections devoted to vegetables, flowers, and fruit, with captions taken from Jones’s own identifications, written by hand on the back of the prints. Renowned writer and restaurateur Alice Waters describes the simple beauty of the photographs in the preface. Robert Flynn Johnson contextualizes the work in the still life tradition and pieces together the fragmentary evidence about the life of this mysterious figure, who trained as a gardener and worked on a number of private estates, but who left no notes or diaries to explain why he photographed the plants he saw every day. The perfect antidote to appetites jaded by processed foods and late twentieth-century consumerism, the legacy of Charles Jones is a reminder of the bountiful riches of nature. 117 illustrations in color and black-and-white

The Plant Kingdoms of Charles Jones

JOHNSON, Robert Flynn

Individual Artists

Charles Jones (1866-1959) is likely to remain forever a mysterious figure. We know that he was born in England, the son of a master butcher. We know that he trained as a gardener and was employed on a number of private estates before retiring. We shall probably never know exactly how and why he came so obsessively and so brilliantly to photograph the plants he encountered in everyday life at the turn of the century. Yet Charles Jones did not photograph his vegetables, fruits, and flowers within nature. On the contrary, he isolated his works against neutral backgrounds - beguiling studio "portraits" of beans and onions, squashes and turnips, tulips and sunflowers, plums and pears. His techniques - close-up viewpoint, long exposure, and spare composition - anticipate by decades the later achievements of modernist masters, for here was an "outsider" genius, who was saved from obscurity only by the photographic collector Sean Sexton's chance discovery of his surviving prints in a London market. The photographs themselves are Jones' only statement. He left no notes, diaries, or writings to explain his reasons for the creation of such a prodigious and concentrated body of work, superbly reproduced in this volume. Revealing art in nature, Jones' images have a wider significance in he history of both photography and still-life, brilliantly explored and explained here by renowned expert Robert Flynn Johnson.

Plant Kingdoms: The Photographs of Charles Jones

Stewart. Tabori & Chang

A brief history of a small elevation

Waldo's Mountain: A Brief History of a Small Elevation

Children's Books

History

Charles B Mc Fadden Inc

Poetry. "There's a lot of blood, both human and animal, in Sean Sexton's stirring first book of poetry. His poems, which include several rare and passionate longer poems, evoke the violence and beauty of life on a Florida cattle farm with clear-eyed eloquence, and their gritty details make Robert Frost seem like a New England gentleman farmer. 'If you would love, learn / the power of life' Sexton writes, and BLOOD WRITING is a mature and Whitmanesque embrace of a fully realized world"--Peter Meinke.

Blood Writing

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Anhinga Press

The second collection of poems from "cowboy poet" Sean Sexton.

May Darkness Restore

Poetry

Press 53

Portals by cowboy poet Sean Sexton "offers rare details to the rich reward of a rancher's life-heretofore overlooked in the arena of cowboy poetry. Offering joy and humor, the basic facts of caring for cattle are often interspersed with his broad range of musings and a sense of satisfaction and connection to art and literature from the outside world. These poems become a diverse journey across a natural landscape and way of life. . . .the subsequent solace acquired by a disappearing breed of men and women with his well-hewn, hands-on poetry." (John Dofflemyer)

Portals: Poems

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Books by Sexton, Sean