WE'VE all seen photographs of kids with horses - Lord knows we've memorised the image of a horse riding a lift in Ballymun ... But take the environment out of the picture: the rubble, the rubbish, the barbed wire, burnt out cars, the trailers and flats... and you get a very different picture altogether. You get straight to the heart of the kids themselves.
That's just what Perry Ogden has done for his exhibition of over 60 photographs entitled "Pony Kids". Shot over the past two years at the horse market in Smithfield, Dublin, these do not constitute the typical photo reportage view of kids overpowered and defeated by their environment. They are instead snapshots of the kids set apart. What you see in their expressions is not defeat but character, pride and attitude. Individuality in buckets. Humour and showmanship in some cases. For the most part, the boys present solemn faces. Young girls, however, tend to smile. But they all stare straight into the camera, self possessed. The ponies are their mostly companions, their charges.
Perry Ogden is a noted international fashion photographer now based in Dublin and best known for his work for the likes of Vogue and W magazines. He would go to the horse market, which takes place on the first Sunday of every month, and take pictures. Gradually he pared away the surroundings in favour of pure portraiture. He'd hang a white backdrop from a wall and ask specific characters if they would oblige. Needless to say queues would form immediately.
He used Polaroid film - the kids were given the originals - and he then printed his pictures off the negatives, a fairly precarious process at the best of times. Unusually for a fashion photographer used to expending rolls upon rolls of film to get one usable picture, he took no more than three and sometimes only one frame of each subject. He was not after the perfect pose. Nor does the erased back ground deny any social verities - they are more than vividly apparent in the children's eyes.
Rather than exhibit the photographs in a gallery, which Ogden felt would be inappropriate and inaccessible, he decided to hang them where they originated: on the walls around Smithfield. "They're going to get nicked and written on and rained upon. . I'm looking forward to see what happens," he says with admirable calm. Thus the posters advertising the show specify a "limited run".
It has been a long and sometimes challenging project, not least of all in the hanging itself. To exhibit the photographs in such a huge space out of doors, he has had to blow them up on a photocopier and patch them together in sections to make 4ftx5ft posters. There has been a month of experimenting with various papers and glues and mounting boards. Perspex offers some protective covering.
So if you're in town tomorrow, make sure to go to see this very moving and telling study of a culture and tradition that has been defined and restyled by a succession of generations. It will be officially opened by the President, Mrs Robinson, this evening, and the market will be in action first thing in the morning. Long may it endure.