Dublin, a Living Portrait

Over the next few weeks Matthew Thompson, UBDTF 2010 Campaign Photographer, will be profiling the Dublin Loves Drama campaign. Here is part one in a series of blogposts..

Like many good ideas, this was born in Library Bar of the The Central Hotel, unlike many such ideas, this one came to fruition. I had been called by Alvin Perry, Catherine Lennon and Annemarie Harrington of the Fresh design team to ask what I could bring to the 2010 Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival campaign when it was at pitch stage, it was worth a shot and with a meeting of minds this became the premise of the shoot.

I spent a week in late May with Fernanda Parente my assistant on foot in Dublin City Centre asking random strangers would they be interested in the project, to my joy and relief almost all asked agreed to our escapade.

Blog 1

“So allow me to be honest and tell the truth about our age and its People”. - August Sander

A frozen conversation, decontextualised and re-played, a shard of time and place. The parallels of the photographic portrait and theatre appear at first to be clear. It seemed apt now more than ever to take an honest portrait of Dublin. A city seemingly in dire need of re-definition. The physical city as a definition seemed inappropriate, whose is it anyway? What appeared were more pertinent was her citizens, the real actors of our human drama. If theatre is a living portrait of our society, then portraits reflecting the diversity of its players only seemed right. Direct and honest photography was what we felt would have the greatest impact in a society saturated and numbed with artifice.

It is not only about how a story is told or what a photograph represents but equally telling how it is understood. Though the absence of smiles or any masks of expression. The viewer is free to understand the situation their own way, through their personal experience.

Three dramatic words would be starkly juxtaposed against an apparent emotional vacuum. “Despair, Resentment, Hope" Two teenage girls sit on the public stage after school in Meeting house Square and confront our viewer. Who is judging whom, whom is under scrutiny? Has the obvious relationship been reversed?

The double portrait echoes the iconic classical Grecian theatrical masks. On a practical aural level they would amplifying the actors voice and on the visual one exaggerate a characters’ emotion but our idea was not to define but rather to suggest, allow the viewer to de-cloak the situation. Theatre and the photographic portrait equally facilitate self examining. Through identifying with our actor /subject we are encouraged to empathize with or reject their moral character. Through this process we come to a more concrete or clearer self awareness, like getting to know yourself through the lens of someone else.

Over the following weeks I will take selection of our encounters and try to convey what was happening at the time, the general chaos and that when a special moment arrives should be captured there and then.

Hope you enjoy.

Matthew UBDTF 2010 Campaign Photographer
http://www.matthewthompsonphotography.com/

View More Images From the Dublin Loves Drama Campaign on Pix.ie