Roisin and Jordan, Russell Heights, Cobh, Ireland, 2011 © Doug Dubois
Peggy Sue Amison, Artistic Director at the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh, County Cork, Ireland, shared some work from Doug Dubois that she has recently curated into an exhibition. Doug has been in residency at the Centre for the last four years, making work about a local housing estate, "focusing on the young people with a specific interest in the 'bravado of youth'."
Dean's tatt, Russell Heights, Cobh, 2009
"During those four years, always in the summer months, Kevin, Erin and a number of other young people in the neighborhood collaborated with Doug and all that goes with large format photography (long exposures, lighting etc...) to create this collection of photographs, a somewhat fictional, somewhat documentary account of adolescence in Ireland and a coming of age story centered around this housing estate in Cobh - a place not unlike hundreds of other housing estates around the world."
Ben in the garden, Russell Heights, Cobh, 2010
"This work is a deliberate collaboration between artist and subject - certain photographs were made spontaneously, but most are fashioned, working together, utilizing a selected wardrobe, setting and circumstance. The scenes are carefully crafted and stylized, evoking the narrative rhetoric of literature and film without doing away with the photographic claim to depict lived experience. The portraits, similarly directed, are often tightly framed to concentrate on the anxious countenance and fragile bravado of a future life not fully imagined or realized."
Bonfire, Russell Heights, Cobh, 2011
The exhibition is on now through December 23rd, 2012 so if you're in the 'hood, please go check it out - looks rather lovely round there...
Russell Heights, Cobh, 2011
Jordan up the pole, Russell Heights, Cobh, 2010All images © Doug Dubois