dublin in pics

You know, after coming back from a Visual Sociology conference, sleeping a bit, and picking up my photos, I'm struck by how much of a person's feel of a place comes through through their pictures. Two full rolls (and a couple remaining on the roll still in my camera) and not a lot of good shots. Not even one outstanding.

Leaving Temple Bar and walking North, this was the first photo I snapped in Dublin. O'Connell St., looking North from the bridge (right).

The Liffey (left) may be Sniffy - not consistently, it sort of wafts up here and there as you walk alongside it - but it really is pretty. It's shallow, not very wide, is a sort of murky greenish-mud colour with random things (natural and not) floating in it, is spotted with unique bridges - each one totally different than the others - and very effectively divides the South and North of the city. That divide seems to run deep - there's a history of a southern "have" versus a northern "have not" that still shows its roots (in architecture, businesses and people) even though both sides have become seriously gentrified since the boom began...

View from the Spire (right): looking South down O'Connell St. If I had have snapped this a few seconds earlier, the couple in the foreground were embracing - it was quite beautiful. Note the statue in the centre (if you peer and squint a bit, you can see a man's upstretched arms)... That is Jim Larkin (1876-1947), a trade union leader and organizer of the general strike of 1913 - "his hands outstretched urging workers to rise up for their rights." While the statue itself wasn't interesting enough for me to snap a picture it seems (odd how those kinds of snapping decisions are made on the fly), I did capture one of the plaque on the bottom of it (below). It reads, in French, Gaelic & English:

"The Great Appear Great Because We Are On Our Knees: Let Us Rise."

The Spire.

Looming 120m over O'Connell St. (you can see its location in the shot of the street, above), the Spire is considered to be the "most controversial piece of modern architecture" in the city. 3m wide at the base and 15cm wide at the tip (the highest structure in Dublin and apparently the highest sculpture in the world), it's been called everything from "the stiletto in the ghetto" to the "tip." While it isn't meant to commemorate anything, my Lonely Planet guide says it's a knitting needle; a homage to Ireland's more recognizable export. Hm. One of my fellow travellers commented on the irony of having a large needle erected at the city centre when the city itself has such a widespread heroin problem...


While much of the city looks this pretty (left), there are some strange architectural styles that I've never seen anywhere else. The Old Jameson Distillery (right), a building constructed in 1780, was the best example of this modern turn I could find... Leave the old, add the new, and make sure the new looks really really new...

Ah, Dublin Castle.

Seems to me that it is more accurately described as a palace...Two things stood out to me here. First was the gorgeous detailing that framed the sides of some doors (right). Second was the back alleyway behind the main Castle area. Whoever decided that primary colours were a good idea to "update" this historic building must have lost their job...

And on to Trinity College. On the left: Jorge Salmon, Provost, 1888-1904. Quite possibly the meanest-looking dude ever cast in stone. Apparently, this distinguished gentleman once said that women would enter the college "over my dead body" - and on the very day the first female student entered, he had a heart attack and died. Or so the story goes... On the right: The Old Library. Home of the Book of Kells.