A Portrait of a Village (part 1)

Laytown, Co.Meath Ireland

During the summer of 1996 I started to photograph the small, seaside village I grew up, a year before I moved to London. I wanted to capture daily life as I knew it; the people, the surroundings and the essence of provincial life. Although this was the environment that shaped me, I felt a certain disconnect to the place. Like many others, I didn’t share the desire to stay put and I wanted to experience more than village life had to offer. 

Although there is an underlying feeling that ‘this is it’, there’s a comfort and charm in close-knit communities. The familiarity of local faces and characters, a sense of belonging and a safety in the known. I continued to photograph every time I returned home, over a period of twenty years. For most of this time, little changed. Time passes, people carry on, and the cycle of life continues.