Alen MacWeeney Northern Ireland photographs

Collection

Collection MS-2020-004: Alen MacWeeney Northern Ireland photographs

Staff Only

Dates

Creation: Majority of material found within 1971 - 2018

Scope and Contents

Nearly 500 black-and-white gelatin silver prints of scenes of life impacted by violence in Northern Ireland, 1971. Included are images of military and paramilitary groups; aftermath of shootings, bombings, and fires; public funerals; grieving families; and everyday events against a backdrop of tanks and armed guards. In addition to the prints, the photographs include 125 scans of contact sheets of the full set of 35mm and 120mm black-and-white Northern Ireland project negatives. MacWeeney numbered his rolls, and these numbers are included both in the file names for the contact sheets and penciled onto the back of the photographic prints along with their exposure number. The work prints are all 8x10."

Content notice

Many images in this collection contain depictions of violence, destruction, death, injury, and trauma during the political and religious conflict in Ireland known as the Troubles. Included are images of the aftermath of bomb explosions and the affected people and communities.

Creator

MacWeeney, Alen (1939) (Person)

Restrictions on access

Collection is open for research.

Restrictions on use

These materials are made available for use in research, teaching and private study, pursuant to U.S. Copyright Law. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Any materials used for academic research or otherwise should be fully credited with the source. The original authors may retain copyright to the materials.

Biographical Note

Alen MacWeeney was born in 1939 in Dublin, Ireland. He began his career in photography when he was 16, working as a press photographer for the Irish Times for a year. At age 21, he worked as an assistant to Richard Avedon in New York and Paris. For the rest of his career he pursued independent photography, first based in his home city of Dublin and later New York City. He used a Leica 35mm camera, complemented by a 120mm camera, for his black-and-white street photography. In Ireland he documented the Travellers (1965-1967), political unrest in Northern Ireland (1971), and landscapes inspired by the works of W. B. Yeats (1965). In the United States his projects included the New York City subways (1977) and Amish communities in Pennsylvania.

MacWeeney's images were published in magazines including The New Yorker, LIFE, House & Garden, Vogue, Travel + Leisure, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Smithsonian, The New York Times Magazine, GEO, Aperture, PEN, Camera International, and American Photographer. He also published monographs of several of his projects: Bloomsbury Reflections (1990), Ireland: Stone Walls & Fabled Landscapes (1998), Irish Travellers: Tinkers No More (2007), Spaces for Silence (2002), W.B. Yeats: Under the Influence (2011), and New York Subways 1977 (limited edition for New York Public Library).

MacWeeney's photographs are in the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Eastman House, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and New York Public Library.

Sources:

"Bio." Alen MacWeeney's web site. Accessed on January 11, 2020 and April 30, 2024. https://www.alenmacweeney.com/bio

Gardener, Jan. "Irish Nomads." The Boston Globe, September 30, 2007.

"New York Subways 1977: Alen MacWeeney" exhibit page. New York Public Library. Accessed on April 30, 2024. https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/alen-macweeney

Rock, Lauren. "Documenting The Irish Travellers: A Nomadic Culture of Yore." The Picture Show: Photo Stories from NPR, November 28, 2012. Accessed on April 30, 2024. https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2012/11/05/164364134/documenting-the-irish-travellers-a-nomadic-culture-of-yore

Extent

1.25 Linear Feet (3 containers)

135 Megabytes (125 image files)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Photographs created by twentieth-century Irish photographer Alen MacWeeney documenting Northern Ireland in 1971. The nearly 500 photographs document the impacts of the violence ensuing from the struggle for power between state military and paramilitary groups, known as the Troubles, on daily life in Northern Ireland.

Arrangement

Alphabetical by format. Materials are by roll and exposure number within format.

Provenance

Purchased from Alen MacWeeney in 2019.

Related Materials

The negatives, logs, and a set of larger exhibition prints MacWeeney selected from the work print images for this project are with Alen MacWeeney's photographic archives at University College Cork. As of 2024, they are not yet publicly available.

Related materials at John J. Burns Library include:

Bobbie Hanvey photographic archives, MS.2001.039, John J. Burns Library, Boston College.

Lesley Doyle photographic archives, BC.2021.018, John J. Burns Library, Boston College.

Michael Schwartz Northern Ireland photographs, MS.2018.005, John J. Burns Library, Boston College.