Photographer Alen MacWeeney visited the city in 1963 and embarked on “a street odyssey reflecting a cross section of the people, their habits and behaviour, ten years before Ireland joined the European Union and the wider world.” My Dublin 1963 // My Dubliners 2020 is a collection of 89 black and white photographs from this time.
The accompanying text consists of social commentary gleaned from a posting by Pesya Altman, co-author, artist and partner of MacWeeney, of each of the book’s photographs on its Facebook page Dublin Down Memory Lane which elicited a flood of 70,000 responses during 2020.
“The responses ranged from wonder and incredulity to heated derision, offset by the hilarity that characterize Dubliners. The richness of the comments will be of interest to any Irish person curious to glimpse Dublin life in the ’60s and to gauge the reactions of Dubliners today. They are entrancing, comical, absurd and poignant, adding a unique dimension to Irish social history.”
Lilliput Press, €40
