TRAIN

“Travelling offers three-dimensional simultaneous perspectives on where we are, where we were, where we are going, a stereoscopic threading of all moments of time and thought simultaneously. Movement exposes the fragility of time, place, identity. It reveals the indelible link between the way we perceive and what we perceive.” Owen O’Carroll

I began this project as the pandemic was unfolding in early 2020. The regional trains coming out of Barcelona are covered in graffiti and I started taking pictures on my journeys up and down the coast to a town on the Maresme. I had started to help a friend restore an old house and by the time the pandemic got going I found myself out of any meaningful work. So, I continued working on the house up the coast taking these trains for the entirety of the covid period. These images are not only very much related to the breakdown that occurred in society over this time but also some personal issues too. I feel we are arriving at a pivotal moment. There is a blurring of the lines, a diffusion of reality, a masking of what’s real. Evolution is the train that has facilitated the trip, once slow and beautiful but now at break neck speed where it’s hard to sit back and view things as they are. We are heading towards somewhere, a moment in our history, as we always are, were and will be. These pictures are about the struggle between now and then, the virus and us, the future and the past. We are all on a journey individually and collectively. This is my perspective, my take on the very important destination we are closing in on.

In December 2020 ‘Train’ was shortlisted for the publication ‘The Crisis & the Future of Democracy’ from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. In 2021 the British Journal of Photography chose 2 images from the same project for their online exhibition ‘Edition 365’. In November 2022, two images were selected for the Halftone Art Fair organised by PhotoIreland at the Library Project in Dublin.