THE first exhibition to grace The Gallery at The Hunt Museum for 2009 is an iconic photographic exhibition, by Hugh Doran. This catalogue of photographs, in collaboration with The Irish Architectural Archive, features a variety of Dublin street scenes and portraiture of the 1950’s and 1960’s and also architectural images of both building exteriors and interiors.
Hugh Doran (1926 – 2004) was a native of Dublin and an amateur photographer of extraordinary talent. A printer by profession, he worked all his life with Arthur Guinness & Co.
He joined the Photographic Society of Ireland in 1949 and was from the mid-1950s a regular contributor and medal winner at the Society’s exhibitions.
Doran’s photographs were also included in exhibitions in Berlin, Bordeaux, Bermuda, San Sebastian and Vienna.
His camera focused on a variety of subjects, but two themes stand out, namely architecture and his native city. His interest in architecture was long-standing and Doran travelled extensively in Ireland and abroad, compiling albums of these trips which focused on the buildings he had visited. Hugh Doran’s Dublin photographs are more personal. They capture a Dublin now vanished, a city free of cars and laced with shadow, an old city, faded yet still as full of life as dereliction.
His photographs were presented to the Irish Architectural Archive in 2005 in accordance with his wishes and there is a 2007 catalogue to this show, running daily January 19 to 22.
