The Great Blasket/An Blascaod Mor: A Photographic Portrait / Portraid Pictiur - Tapa dura

Ireland has a fine heritage of traditional culture and photography plays a major part in recording this heritage. Thousands of photographs now in Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhoir/The Great Blasket Centre include a range of material, from private mementoes of families to the work of folklorists, press photographers, and others. The first photographs on the Great Blasket were taken by Alma Curtin in 1891. For the next sixty years or so the islanders and the island would be photographed by all who visited, including the children of people who had emigrated. The result is an extraordinary chronicle of a way of life and kinship, of the life and death of the Great Blasket, evacuated in 1953 but never abandoned. This collection captures the spirit of the island community, from the excitement of discovery by the outside world in the late nineteenth century, through to the decline of the 1940s and the legacy since 1953. Ta oidhreacht den scoth o thaobh an chultuir traidisiunta ar fail in Eirinn agus ta ait larnach ag an ngrianghrafadoireacht i dtaifead na hoidhreachta sin.Ta raon leathan abhar sa chnuasach de chupla mile grianghraif ata anois i gcartlann Ionaid an Bhlascaoid Mhoir, idir abhair cuimhneachain o theaghlaigh priobhaideacha agus saothar bhealoideasaithe, grianghrafadoiri preas agus daoine eile. B'i Alma Curtin a thog na chead phictiuir riamh ar an mBlascaod, in 1891. Ar feadh seasca eigin bliain ina dhiaidh sin thog scata cuairteoiri, eisimircigh agus a sliocht ina measc, grianghraif den oilean agus de mhuintir an oileain. Mar thoradh ar seo ta againn portraid gan saru de shli mhaireachtala agus de mhuintearas, de shaol agus de mheath phobail an Bhlascaoid Mhoir, a treigeadh i 1953 ach nar ligeadh i ndearmad riamh na choiche. Leirionn an cnuasach seo spiorad mhuintir an oileain, on luchair a bhain lena fhionnachtain ag deireadh na naou haoise deag, go dti meath na 1940i agus oidhreacht na haite o 1953 ar aghaidh.

Daithi de Mordha, from Baile na Ghleanna, Dun Chaoin, works in The Blasket Centre, and has studied the literary heritage, language, folklore and culture of the island. He has developed the photographic archive as an integral part of the social and cultural record of the lives of the islanders. A contributor to several documentary films on the heritage of West Kerry, he recently completed an M.Phil at the Department of Folklore and Ethnology, UCC.