The TLP Edition: Footnotes

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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.

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Trailscapes

Wicklow Way, Trailscapes, 2019

Back in December I made what I’ve temporarily called trailscapes. Another creation in its infancy, I was reminded of them yesterday as I was tidying up my notes, and decided they might be something nice to share. Below is what I was thinking at the time.

When I walk, each trail feels like a world of it’s own. 

The line it creates trails across the maps in my hand, across the ground in front of me, across my memory of where I have come from, and projected into my expectations of what is ahead. 

Looking at my feet I see the line extend away from me as clear as day, a path worn into the soil. Lifting my gaze it dissolves into the lay of the land, becoming airborne as I invisibly connect the dots between the yellow way makers that I can see criss-crossing the landscape ahead of me.  The trail, the line, is the centre of my world - everything is thought of in relation to its proximity to the line. How much of a deviation is it to that spot? What will I naturally pass just by following this line? 

And all of these lines I walk are fragments of the whole piece: not physically connected to each other, worlds of their own, and yet part of my walk and my project. I connect these lines through my travels, each world affecting how I experience the next and understand the previous. 

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It was along such lines of thought that these “trailscapes” came to be. Each image features the shape of a trail that I walked, often hundreds of kilometers condensed into a small twisted squiggle. The second part of the piece is an image I made along that trail that, for me, feels like an image that represents the trail. The line of the trail crosses and image, defines the space and changes the image from a place to look into, to an abstracted space.  The circle creates a world, and the trail takes you through its world and out the other side. 

South Leinster Way, Trailscapes, 2019