editorial home

The idea of ‘home’ as a place of refuge is a modern one. As Danielle Patten from the Museum of Home explains, it is only in the 20th Century, with greater home ownership, more regulation of working hours and the pervasiveness of modern communication that we come to see our homes as bastions of privacy. With the advent of social media and the experience of a global pandemic that had us working in our front rooms again, perhaps that process is being reversed and our domestic space is becoming semi-public once more. Annie Ernaux and Wolfgang Tillmans in different ways (but with similar photographs) have recorded a particular intimacy associated with our living spaces. They have both photographed discarded clothes, suggesting the recent vulnerability of their wearers. Klara Fritz writes about the way a small domestic untidiness can point to larger philosophical themes of absence. Lydia Goldblatt’s Fugue is driven by a need to ‘explore and respond to the fundamental themes of intimacy, claustrophobia, love and loss that have been brought to the fore through the loss of my mother and becoming a mother myself’. The work gives a representation of domestic space that is neither apologetic nor idealised. The poet and essayist Jessica Traynor responds to the images. Traynor’s most recent collection of poems Pit Lullabies includes a fractured sequence of attempted lullabies that moves from dark days of new motherhood to lighter times. Traynor was intrigued by ‘the echoes I found between our similar but different experiences’. Dorje de Burgh’s Under the Same Sky documents Carrick-onSuir and the surrounding area of County Tipperary during the Covid19 pandemic, in particular that moment’s atmosphere of trauma and inertia. The work attempts to map a personal conception of home, belonging, community and alienation. Una Mullally writes about the work and how it leaves her ‘questioning: do we ever belong where we end up, even if that’s where we’re “from”? Is this place being left behind, or am I?’ The Shannon Development Photographic Archive is part of the Special Collections and Archives Department at the University of Limerick’s Glucksman Library. In 2023 it received funding from the Wellcome Trust to catalogue, conserve, digitise and increase accessibility to its 25,000 – 36,000 original photographic negatives. This was part of a collaborative project ‘The New Jerusalems: post-war New Town archives in Britain and Ireland’. We asked Colin Graham to have a look at the archive. In his essay to accompany the images he notes how Shannon ‘became a home for newcomers and future generations and a kind of social experiment which Ireland was unprepared for.’

— The Editors contributors

3

Josh Allen is a writer based in Birmingham.

Jane Audas is a writer and curator based in London.

John Beck is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Westminster.

stephen Bull is a writer and is Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of Brighton.

Dorje de Burgh is a photographer based in Dublin.

orla Fitzpatrick is a writer based in Dublin.

Klara Fritz is a writer based in Vienna.

Kyveli Lignou-Tsamantani is Lecturer in Art History at the University of York.

susanna galbraith is a writer based in Belfast and a Source researcher.

Tony godfrey is an art critic based in the Philippines.

Lydia goldblatt is a photographer based in London.

Colin graham is Professor of English at Maynooth University.

Daniel Jewesbury is a lecturer at the University of Gothenburg.

morwenna Kearsley is an artist and writer based in Glasgow.

oana sanziana marian is a writer based in Dublin.

Joseph mcBrinn is Reader in Design History at Ulster University.

roberta mcgrath is a writer based in Edinburgh.

Jessie mclaughlin is an artist and writer based in Sweden.

Chloé morrison is the Audience Development Officer at Source.

Una mullally is a writer based in Dublin.

Colin pantall is a writer, photographer and lecturer based in Bath.

Annette richardson is a researcher and lecturer based in London.

Kimberly schreiber is an art historian based at University College London.

Conohar scott is a lecturer in photographic theory based in England.

Jessica Traynor is a poet and essayist from Dublin, and her latest collection is Pit Lullabies (Bloodaxe, 2022).

richard West is a Source editor.