Through the Lens: Luke Gibbons - Beyond the Frame: The Deflected Gaze in Irish Photography

As part of our new Through the Lens lecture series, Luke Gibbons will explore the complex relationship between visual culture and Irish identity through photography. Drawing on a diverse range of works, Gibbons will address how photographs both reveal and obscure aspects of Irish life and history. He will discuss the ways photography has shaped and reflected national identity, from the Romantic images of Ireland’s rugged landscapes to the post-Famine depictions of poverty and emigration. Gibbons will also examine the impact of political turmoil, such as the Troubles, on visual culture, highlighting how photography captures the unseen—loss, absence, and resistance. Through an exploration of both historical and contemporary Irish photography, Gibbons will invite the audience to consider how images of Ireland provoke deeper understandings of time, place, and memory.

Speaker Biography
Luke Gibbons has taught as Professor of Irish Studies at Maynooth University and the University of Notre Dame, and as Director of MA in Film and Television Studies at Dublin City University. His most recent book is James Joyce and the Irish Revolution (2023). He was a member of the Board of Trustees at Photo Museum Ireland (2018-24) and his other publications include Joyce’s Ghosts: Ireland, Modernism and Memory (2015), Limits of the Visible: Representing the Great Famine (2013) Transformations in Irish Culture (1996), Edmund Burke and Ireland: Aesthetics, Politics and the Colonial Sublime (2003), and The Quiet Man (2002).