Small Lives

We might not know most of their names or where they are from, but I got to know the children in the upcoming Small Lives Exhibition very well. I started work on the exhibition back in April, going through our collection of digitised photographs. I put them all into a folder and pored over them trying to decide which to choose. Curating an exhibition doesn’t just mean choosing your favourites, more’s the pity. Pretty pictures of children, of which we have many, weren’t going to do justice to the variety in our collections or the story of childhood in Ireland.

As I worked through the photos some themes emerged: work, play, school, religion and politics. Children don't exist in a little bubble away from the rest of the world, they are part of the society they are growing up in and are witnesses to the social and political history of their time. I have tried to convey that in the exhibition. You will also see pictures of kids being kids, playing and playing up to the camera. And of course the odd pretty one...

There are fifty photographs in the final exhibition which opens on Thursday 25 August. All of the photographs are being uploaded to our Flickr stream, so if you can’t make it to the National Photographic Archive in Temple Bar, Dublin, you can still meet the kids.

Well maybe not this one below...