Ireland & England
1977 and 1982
When traveling, it is easier to notice and reproduce one’s expectations and previously seen photographs of that place than to consciously attend to one’s experiences. This of course is true of all photography, but foreign travel tends to foreground this observation. A colleague, Denis Murphy, told me Skellig Rock was the only place I truly had to visit in Ireland. It led to my characterization of the Ireland I was moved by as a country of stone and spirit afloat in blood. In England, minor dramas appeared everywhere. They tended to overshadow the work of 19th century English landscape photographers I much admire and came expecting to find.
