From The Series FAITH OF OUR FATHERS

By MARTIN MONAGHAN

It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of Martin Monaghan on Christmas Eve 2006. A Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, he was without doubt one of the finest photographers in Ireland. He was a man who thought deeply about his photography, and his work was of an exceptional standard. The image shown here is from a colour series depicting abandoned religious objects in derelict houses. The pictures were the work of a probing and poetic mind. An incurable trespasser, he also had a stunning colour portfolio of more abstract images from empty and ruined homes in his native Co Down. The above picture gives just a hint of the originality and depth of his photography.

He wrote: "Faith Of Our Fathers is the title of a traditional Catholic hymn which was stirring in its demand of unquestioning loyalty and uncompromising belief to the faith. To a degree, this manifested itself in an overindulgent display in many Catholic households of an iconography which I well remember as a child growing up in the 1950s in rural County Down. In recent years, I became aware that this seemingly ostentatious statement of belief was dying or indeed dead in many rural areas and being replaced, if at all, by a more prosaic symbol of worship. To this end, I endeavoured to document what remained of this practice. The pictures were taken over a two year period in derelict homes in my own or neighbouring areas. Apart from being a visual document, the images attempt to employ some social and historical content, parody and even humour. The backdrop of dereliction, the explicit and implicit signs that are repeated from house to house, image to image, acquire a range of interpretations, especially in the context of a contemporary Ireland. They stand, I hope, as a testament to a way of life more innocent yet possibly more terrifying to the inhabitants of these homes, now forgotten."

May he be at peace.

 

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