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JM Synge’s photographs captured island life in the west of Ireland, and are a sensitive exploration of a lifestyle that was then already slowly disappearing, writes DEIRDRE McQUILLAN

THESE PHOTOGRAPHS taken on the Aran Islands between l898 and 1902 by the playwright John Millington Synge are part of an exhibition devoted solely to the writer’s pioneering photography, which is often overlooked in the context of his celebrated writings. Originally published by Dolmen Press in 1971, under the title My Wallet of Photographsand arranged by Lilo Stephens, whose husband, Edward Stephens, was a nephew of Synge, the photographs provide a fascinating turn-of-the-century visual record of the people and places in Dublin, Wicklow and the west of Ireland immortalised in his literary and dramatic writings. There are images of sheep fairs in Rathdrum and Leenane in Co Galway, portraits of farmers, farriers and family groups, a captured past revealing as much about its subjects and their way of life as the observer himself.