Photo lovers may get caught ‘Between Two Waves of the Sea’

The exhibition ‘Between Two Waves of the Sea’ by Phelim O’Laoghaire will be on at Signal Arts Centre from Monday, November 9, until Sunday, November 19.

A self-taught photographer, Phelim Ó Laoghaire has worked with a passionate obsession since he was 14 years old. In July 2015, having just won The Irish Times Amateur Photographer of the Year Gold Medal for Street Photography,

Phelim Ó Laoghaire left Ireland for Crimea, to teach at a summer camp in the coastal town, Morskoe (meaning ‘of the sea’ or marine), where he later discovered his grandfather had once studied.

There he produced his first major series, Postcards from the Black Sea.

O’Laoghaire’s first exhibition is a subjective contemplation of the idea of coming of age, though he was not fully conscious at the time of what was being articulated.

Only later, when he returned home and started his final year in school, did he recognize a mood of apprehension, even alienation in the pictures – the feeling of having been separated from past routines, aware of those new ones about to emerge. That time away was fraught with a growing sense of responsibility for his future and by envisaging himself as a separate individual, yet still caught up within the working of the world.

The location itself adds to this charged atmosphere of uncertainty and change. Yet in looking at the pho- tographs, they emphasize the harsh and at times oppressive contrast of the sea and the concrete, evoking states of being, rather than place. We imagine it could be anywhere, that the boys leaping, plunging, submerged or about to jump, could be anyone.

An opening reception will take place on Thursday, November 9, from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m.