An award-winning documentary on the work of world-renowned photographer Dorothea Lange is to be shown in Ennis, Co Clare, tonight.
On assignment for Life magazine in 1954, Lange visited various parts of Co Clare taking 2,000 photographs, focusing on the people and landscape. However, the photos went missing for a number of years before being discovered by Dubliner Gerry Mullins in 1994.
Two years later, a book containing many of the photographs was published. Now US cinematographer Dierdre Lynch has retraced Lange's footsteps, meeting many of the people she photographed almost half a century ago.
Many of the people pictured in Dorothea Lange's Ireland were unidentified and this spurred Ennis-based nurse, Anne Heraty, to criss-cross Clare to find out the names of those in the book.
All but a few have now been identified including a young girl, standing beside a horse in one photo. "People can identify the horse for some reason, but they couldn't say who the girl was," Heraty says.
To identify another girl, she sat in an Ennis shop for an afternoon with the book, asking townspeople did they recognise her. Eventually, she was identified as Ennis woman Ms Mary Kinevane.
"I really enjoyed the project as it is not the usual kind of work I would do," Ms Heraty adds. Her detective work allowed Ms Lynch to forge ahead with the project, which won Best Documentary at this year's Galway Film Fleadh.
She says: "It was a real privilege to go into the peoples' home and be welcomed so freely. That spirit captured in Dorothea's photos remains there in the people today."
One of the revelations of the Photos to Send documentary centres on the shock Sister Mary Rose Crowe from the county, now a nun, received to discover that Lange's shot of her as a young girl ended up as the cover photo for Feargal Keane's 1996 book, A Letter to Daniel.
Jackie Cullinan (72) from Mount Callan will be one of those attending the Clare premiere tonight. He does not feature in Lange's photos, but a photo of his father "Halo" is one of the most celebrated.
Cullinan says he cherishes the photograph Lange took of his father, who was 75 years old at the time. "It is the only one I have. She caught him on a bad day and he comes across as the real stage Irishman in it."
He remembers Lange's visit to the family farm. "We didn't have a clue who she was, we only found out years later that she was an international photographer."
Pictured with three friends outside Bunratty creamery, SΘamus Quinn (78) says he met friends every morning at the creamery and remembers that Lange "didn't speak to us at all, she just took the photo and smiled".
