Tomorrow night I'm heading to Portlaoise to open an exhibition of photographs by John Lalor at the Aras an Chontae. "Third World Eyes" is a photographic journey across three continents that John embarked on in 2008. John was a student on my documentary photography course in April 2010. He brought his portfolio into the Gallery of Photography on the first night and showed some images that will be appearing in the exhibition. The photograph of the little girl from a village in Nepal was the one I remembered the most. Despite her dirty face and scruffy hair, she is still beautiful in her little pink dress. Nothing, not even poverty can take that away. I thought of Steve McCurry's Afghan girl and told John about his work and his book South Southeast which I remember saving up the money to buy almost (gulp!) ten years ago. I took it back down from the shelf the other day and remember how I was mesmerized by his perfect composition in the photograph of the fishermen from Sri Lanka, by the decisive moments he captured in so many of the images like the doves outside the mosque in Mazar-e Sharif in Afghanistan or the man in Agra standing in a stream with water falling from his hand into a spectacular reflection of the Taj Mahal. Then there were the colours, those colours that only come out after rain, especially in Jodhpur, never did chili pepper red and sky blue go so well together. I wish John every success in his photographic career and hope he never has to sew rolls of film into his clothes as he negotiates unsafe borders in dangerous places."Third World Eyes" exhibition
Tomorrow night I'm heading to Portlaoise to open an exhibition of photographs by John Lalor at the Aras an Chontae. "Third World Eyes" is a photographic journey across three continents that John embarked on in 2008. John was a student on my documentary photography course in April 2010. He brought his portfolio into the Gallery of Photography on the first night and showed some images that will be appearing in the exhibition. The photograph of the little girl from a village in Nepal was the one I remembered the most. Despite her dirty face and scruffy hair, she is still beautiful in her little pink dress. Nothing, not even poverty can take that away. I thought of Steve McCurry's Afghan girl and told John about his work and his book South Southeast which I remember saving up the money to buy almost (gulp!) ten years ago. I took it back down from the shelf the other day and remember how I was mesmerized by his perfect composition in the photograph of the fishermen from Sri Lanka, by the decisive moments he captured in so many of the images like the doves outside the mosque in Mazar-e Sharif in Afghanistan or the man in Agra standing in a stream with water falling from his hand into a spectacular reflection of the Taj Mahal. Then there were the colours, those colours that only come out after rain, especially in Jodhpur, never did chili pepper red and sky blue go so well together. I wish John every success in his photographic career and hope he never has to sew rolls of film into his clothes as he negotiates unsafe borders in dangerous places.
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