Category: tourism

Leaving Galway

We spent the first two weeks of August, traveling around Ireland. We started in Galway and proceeded more or less counter-clockwise, including time in Ulster, then Donegal, before traversing the island to Dublin and our flight home. I shot over 1000 frames, so expect to see lots of verdant landscapes, castles and other postcard-genre, tourist shots over the coming days and weeks.

The tour was designed for photographers and their non-photographer partners and I was expecting to travel around in a small coach. In fact we were in one of those gigantic modern buses. The first couple of days in Galway town were quite rainy but then we got on the bus and left. Here are a few snaps through the window of the bus before we made our first stop.

Leaving town
County Galway, Ireland

Bowness

Samuel Johnson wrote Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia in the 18th century and I read it in college in the 20th (it’s where we get the word serendipity from). The grave of Rasselas, native of Abyssinia is in the churchyard of the 15th century St Martin’s church in Bowness. Lovely weather brought the tourists out in the pier area. Click any image to see them each enlarged to full size.

Telfair’s Owens-Thomas House

We visited the Owens-Thomas House, part of the Telfair trio of museums. Interestingly, they have shifted their historical focus from showing off the pleasures of genteel, ante-bellum life to the realities of enslavement. Of particular interest was a plaque discussing the impact of language on our discourse and recommending that instead of “slave,” we use the term “enslaved person,” separating their enslavement from their essential personhood; the term “enslaver,” in preference to “master;” and to eschew the bucolic “plantation” in favor of “slave labor camp,” a more apt description of their essential character.

Shopping for an Art Experience

Barbara Kruger’s massive retrospective, Thinking of You, I Mean Me, I Mean You, was truly impressive, though I’m not sure if it’s as brilliant as it first seems in the final analysis. It’s a clever commentary on contemporary, surveillance capitalism, social media and much else that ails contemporary society. But, as the pictures above, of people capturing images of it on their phones may suggest, it’s not clear that it’s having the desired effect on viewers.

Click any image to see them all enlarged (on full browsers).