Voices of Connemara

Sailing westward from Connemara out beyond the Aran Islands and into the rolling grey-green Atlantic Ocean, the next landfall is the rocky, saw-toothed coast of North America. For those people, those who went and those who stayed, a great omnipresence in their lives has been the sound of the sea and the sweep of a shared landscape. Lone, stunted trees silhouetted like gallows on outcrops of rock. Little coppices of twisted whins or gorse, all leaning like oeisant pilgrims to the east. And that unique western light, drowning in the eyes of grey stone walls, where stone is laid loosely upon stone, in perfect equilibrium without mortar or pointing.

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When Raymonde Standun set about photographing the local people of the South Connemara Gaeltacht, she quickly sensed that here were stories to be told that lay beyond the reach of a camera. Unique places, unique people: a nucleus of Irish culture, its language, music and dance. Voices of Connemara wants to keep this heritage alive in pictures as well as the written word. The book contains 51 interviews among them: Martin Flaherty on the Black and Tans, Julia Greaney on the Fair Day at Spiddal, Cait Nic an Iomaire on making her own wedding dress, and Festy Conlon on his father's first fife.