“This is my brother Mathún, also known as Matt and occasionally as Buddy. It’s hard to explain to people who didn’t live in Dublin at this time – my guess is that the picture was taken circa 1959 when Mathún was about 20 years old – how evocative Arthur Fields’ photographs are of O’Connell Street’s atmosphere then. The feeling has a great deal to do with the figure of Fields himself. He had a curious slouching way of standing and an impassivity of expression – I don’t recall him ever smiling or trying to ingratiate himself with the people he photographed. He just did his job. He was part of the soul of the city. I never knew he was Jewish until today. Now that I know it he seems to me to be a kind of Leopold Bloom: watchful, respectful, worldly, but also worldly-wise. I wish the project every success. (Mathún died on the fifth of February 2011.)
”
(1959)
Submitted by Brian Lynch