Growing up, I always felt that the only place to find adventure would be outside this island. I wanted to explore, to see new places, to have new experiences. And that’s exactly what I did. However, a recurring conversation began to follow me - the further I went, and the more people I met, the more I was told what a beautiful, unique, and idyllic place Ireland was. To them, Ireland represented the exact type of adventure that I was travelling to find.
This project was born from a desire to explore and know my home. To find the Ireland that I hadn’t experienced. In order to achieve this, I walked each and every one of the National Waymarked Trails of Ireland. These trails, 42 in total, rambled through 25 counties, and encompassed a combined distance of over 4,000km. The photographs and reflections selected for this publication are a sample of the work created from this ongoing project.
My TLP Edition, Footnotes, is here.
It’s based off of one of the four small books I created as part of my Practice-led Masters by Research in IADT, that I graduated from last October. The ‘book-set' I created last year was called Footnotes, of which I made a limited run of them as a culmination to the project and the Masters. Each of the four books had its own title within the set, andThe title of this part was Footnotes; Traces.
Having created these multiple publications I was unsure how to share them with the world - it’s hard enough to publish one book, never mind a set of four in a hand made case. Quite a while ago, Ángel from PhotoIreland and I had agreed to make a TLP Edition of one of my projects; as soon as I had one I wanted to see in this format. As someone who loves to create books and tactile things, this should have been an almost instant thing, however it’s been a project long in-waiting.
Finding a way of sharing one element of my research, reflections, and images with the world so soon after graduating is really great, and I’m so happy to see this part of my work alive. You can order a copy from The Library Project (€6), in Temple Bar Dublin. It’s a print run of 200.
Happy 2022.
