Into the light

There hasn't exactly been a blaze of publicity and camera flashes, but a national cultural institution will open in new premises tomorrow. The National Photographic Archive, whose riches have until now been hiding their light under a bushel at the National Library, will now be housed beneath DIT's School of Photography in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar.

The purpose-built space, designed by O'Donnell & Tuomey, consists of an exhibition area as well as a reference library of books and databases on the collection of almost 400,000 photographs, glass plates and negatives. The archive is opening nearly three years later than was expected, due, according to National Library director Brendan O'Donoghue, to the difficulty and expense of providing proper staffing, as well as to technical problems with the building, which had to be sorted out before the easily damaged collection could be moved in.

Minister de Valera will do the honours tomorrow, and the inaugural exhibition, Into The Light, will be on display to the public from Monday. Sarah Rouse's handbook, which has the same title, gives a general introduction to the collection. The images published in it give a tantalising glimpse of the kind of social history which the archive must contain: the shifting of the lens through time as cameras came not just to be held in the hands of the privileged to create an image of privileged life, but to give testimony in so many other ways. Take a look at the image below, from the Coolgreany Evictions Album, 1887, for instance, an album of 46 photographs and the gift of a Mrs Bridie Hogan from Queensland, Australia, in 1992. It comes down the generations from a priest who was active in relief work and political resistance to the evictions.