From a barefoot girl in the snow to a pole-vaulter in waistcoat and tie with trouser-ends tucked into his socks, a new exhibition of Fr Frank Browne’s photographs provides an insight into the priest, his subjects and the times in which they lived.
Almost 200 photographs, curated by Jurga Rakauskaite, are on show at the OPW Farmleigh Gallery in the Phoenix Park, Dublin taken by the Jesuit priest, who is best known for his images of the Titanic before it sank in 1912.
The exhibition is a small selection of the 41,500 negatives retained by Fr Browne, of images collected from 1897 until 1960 in locations in Ireland, Europe, Australia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Egypt as well as during his time as chaplain to the Irish Guards during the First World War.
The negatives were rediscovered in a trunk in 1985 and conserved, copied and catalogued by Davison and Associates.
Among the most striking images is one taken in August 1917 entitled Cavalry at Ypres, Flanders, with the thick mud of the battlefield dominating the foreground.
Many of the photos are of men and boys, among them Father and Son at Inisheer, in 1938, the little boy holds his father's hand and is dressed as was traditional, as a girl.
Cardsharks, shows a group of priests playing cards on an upturned box at the edge of Lough Gill in Co Sligo in 1933 while on an outing. And Policeman and Raider shows a little boy on a toy car with a gun talking to a policeman at an otherwise traffic-free Cowper Gardens in Dublin, in 1942.
There is even a “selfie” of Fr Browne, taken using a mirror while he was getting a haircut at barber’s Maison Prost on St Stephen’s Green in 1940.
Speaking at the official launch of the exhibition, Edwin Davison of Davison and Associates said some of the negatives were “the explosive type” and had to be duplicated rapidly before they were destroyed. He said while previous exhibitions have been themed, such as for the Titanic, the current one is “just good pictures” covering a diverse range of subjects.
Choosing the images was “awful”, he said, but he is delighted with the results.
“It took a long time to get to this point; it is nice to finally see it happen.”
The exhibition was officially opened by Tánaiste Joan Burton with historian and broadcaster Dr John Bowman.
Ms Burton described the exhibition as “wonderful”. She said Fr Browne’s name isn’t really internationally known.
“I think the publication of the major study on his photography and exhibitions like this really establish him as one of the greatest photographers of the first half of the 20th century,” she said.
“He has a tremendous interest in people and the relationship of the person to landscape and the world that they are in. His work is quite extraordinary.”
The free exhibition will run until December 23rd and coincides with the Yale University Press publication of a book of the priest's images – Frank Browne, A Life Through the Lens.
