Portrait of a Century – photographs by Kim Haughton
President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins will officially launch the new exhibition at the National Museum of Ireland-Decorative Arts & History, Collins Barracks, Dublin 7.
On Thursday evening 20th April 2017 at the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts & History President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins will officially launch a new exhibition Portrait of a Century- Photographs by Kim Haughton.
Portrait of a Century is a photographic exhibition of one hundred images of people who are threaded together through a shared language, culture and nationhood. Presented for the first time in its entirety, each photograph represents the birth year of the person in it and the series as a whole spans a one hundred year time frame from 1916 to 2015. The exhibition is a photographic representation of a nation reflected in those who have shaped it in some way.
Between 2015 and 2016, photographer Kim Haughton sought out people who had a connection to Ireland. Starting with Ken Whitaker, born in 1916 during the rumblings of rebellion to Máire Mhac an tSaoi whose birth in 1922 coincided with the creation of the new state, she trained her lens on familiar faces of people who are woven into the fabric of the Irish arts as well as sporting legends, presidents, public servants, private citizens, pioneering women, dazzling young people and the children of the future to create this visual time capsule of a nation in transition.
Portrait of a Century is based on the subject of Ireland’s centenary, and follows on from the enormously successful Proclaiming a Republic: The 1916 Rising exhibition, which opened to the public in March 2016 and is ongoing. It underlines the National Museum of Ireland’s commitment to telling the stories behind Irish men, women and children of the past century while simultaneously underlining the institution’s emphasis on the power of contemporary art and design to interpret those stories in an accessible yet moving way.
Kim Haughton is an Irish photographer based in New York. She completed her MA at London University of the Arts. In 2015 she was named as an Irish photographer to watch by TIME magazine who described her work as ‘at once sparse and textured’. She spent the early part of her career as a photo journalist covering post conflict humanitarian issues around the globe. Her work has been exhibited in London, New York, Oslo and Dublin. Her images have been included in publications worldwide, including The Financial Times, Der Spiegel and Vanity Fair. Her work is held in the National Archives of Ireland.