My Dark Rosaleen

'My Dark Rosaleen' - a poem by James Clarence Mangan, written as a love poem, however the poet's love is for his country, Ireland.

Living in Ireland, even through the troubles, still means dull, damp 'soft' days, gentle light and history. Not 'big' history, but a chronological tapestry of families, houses and furniture, with occasions and events bearing up a tradition. Social structures following a pattern unchanged for generations - clocks that have ticked for decades, forks that have lifted a thousand meals, gently inherited tastes, smells, sounds and language structures that go unnoticed. Births, Marriages and Deaths always continuing in the same, but only possible way. Accepted with an inevitability which surrounds all fortune and action.

Minor White: ‘To photograph not just for what the subject is, but for what else it is’.