THE GREAT FAMINE

Abstract

The primary question this study seeks to answer is a simple one: namely, why do we remember the Irish Famine of the 1840s through photographic recall when no photographs of the Famine exist? In order to address this question consideration is firstly given to the visual culture in which Famine iconography established itself; that is, as graphic illustrations. The authors then investigate the effects of later eviction photographs (from the 1880s and 1890s) being reproduced as visual ‘stand-ins’ for famine conditions in current popular histories of the Irish. What the latter entails is a conflation of two distinct cultural locations. The outcome is the forsaking of historical actuality, a misunderstanding of how photography operates to construct meanings and an obscuring of the narrative-driven basis by which the nation both comes into being and recognises itself as such through visual representations.

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