Boy on Wall, The Liberties, Dublin, Ireland, 2003~5
Boy on Wall, The Liberties, Dublin, Ireland, 2005     Christopher Harrington

This and more images available in my Silver Sale.

My project in the Liberties area of Dublin was the final instalment from a triptych of projects made within 3 inner city communities of unique character from 3 European cities of historical Revolutions.  I worked as citizen photographer, embedded in these communities, making photographs as part of daily life. I was seeing with my camera moments, instances in which my neighbours and various people encountered seemed to be articulating the concept of transition within the context of cityscapes that have played host to moments of historical and daily personal courage. My camera, during these projects from 1999~2005, was a way for me to see off a millennium and realise essential qualities of the human experience that will endure. 

Behind me as I made this photograph were my wife and son, not yet 1 year~old. Some of my favourite early images of my young family were made seconds away. Our son was born in a hospital a short walk from this Museum garden area where this photograph was made. During our family day out, I watched this other lad play on this wall and through him I glimpsed forward a few years in time at my baby boy sitting with his mother a few steps away. I felt completely unprepared in many ways for raising a child (much less 2 when our daughter was born). I think this image got at the essence of a personal moment that might resonate for fathers and sons; and I can say that it marks that I had come to a time in my work of a kind of mastery of form, place, materials, and personal craft at a moment in time that, as I reflect back, was about to present mystery, challenges, and changes on all fronts.