The Fall Ireland Dispatches 9

T H E I R E L A N D D I S P A T C H E S
photos and story © 2000 Doug Plummer
no use without authorization

o241629.jpg (14122 bytes)

I’m on the tip of Valencia Island, a place on the westernmost edge of Europe. Sheer cliffs drop below me, waves crash. To the west, the two Skellig Islands rise from the Atlantic like Giza pyramids. Tendrils of rain wash across the sky under a dark cloud base. The islands are lit in their own private pool of sun, as skeins of rain fall in front. The sun is obscured by the coming squall, and above it a sun ring appears for a few moments, then disappears.

With the panoramic I’m composing a shot of this. Just the edge of the sea at the floor of the frame. Dead center are the two islands, and directly about them, about two palm widths, is the partially obscured sun. It’s an austere image, and it’s fluid. The sky is changing by the moment, so I keep banging away. Among these two or three rolls is going to be the shot, I know.

Intently observing with a camera creates, for me, a heightened acuity to my surroundings. I deepen my exposure to the moment by this craft. And yet, for a long time I struggled to reconcile the contradition between being an observer and a participant. I think I entered photography the way a lot of shy people do, as a means of mediation with the world that I couldn’t carry on unencumbered. My way of resolving the dilemma is to use the process as the means to generate meaningful exchanges, with people and landscapes, that would never otherwise occur.

But I have also lived that moment with the anticipation of the imagined photograph. There is the inevitable disappointment upon opening up the boxes of slides, or scanning the contacts. Robin is acutely familiar with this. I seem to go into the deepest depression for a day and a half. Nothing is as it was remembered. I have to be reminded, yet again, that this act of photography is about making a parallel reality to the one that I experienced. And then the gems start appearing. Robin is bemused, yet again. I run upstairs, "Look at this! Can you believe this image?" The alternate photographic reality asserts itself.

So it may well not be the Skellig Islands and the sun that is going to be the memorable photographic image of the trip. But, in latent form, it remains within me.

Doug Plummer

Portmagee, Co. Kerry



	Day: One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine
	Sign The Guestbook