Up in Smoke

This blip comes as much as a surprise to me today as it probably has to you. Yet again, a trip to Ireland has been fraught with difficulty, this time not down to my own absent-mindedness in respect to an expired passport or a lost wallet, but because of the weather. My 8am flight to Dublin was scuppered because the plane couldn't land at Leeds due to thick fog. At 10am the departure board told us to go to the gate, but from there we were led a merry dance through the airport to arrive outside at Arrivals! A rumour started circulating that we were going to be bussed to Liverpool, which was as far as our plane had managed to get. Except there were no buses. And the mist was now lifting with the sun starting to break through. I could have told them that was going to happen!

I was so engrossed in my book that I hadn't noticed that everyone else had wandered back inside the terminal building. I was also oblivious to the announcement made that our plane had managed to get in and was being readied for departure. It was very fortunate then that someone I had got chatting to earlier was thoughtful enough to come find me. I must have seemed very detached from the world for him to worry about me like that. That does happen when I get lost in a good story!

Anyway, to cut this story short, I arrive in Dublin about three and a half hours later than expected, missing my train to Killarney, and then the next one too. With an hour to kill in Dublin before the 3pm train I suddenly remember that blipper Raheny eye's exhibition Up in Smoke is on at the moment. It takes a little finding but I get there in end, and I'm so glad I made that effort, not just to meet the wonderful guy, but to see his photographs in the flesh, so to speak. These images of smokers, taken mostly during his lunch hour on the streets of Dublin, are incredibly engaging when just viewed on the screen, through this web site, but to see them printed up and on display was a different experience altogether. I could stare into these faces for a very long time. Each hints at a story I will never know, but somehow I do know at a cultural level, through these photographs. That is their power ... if that doesn't sound too pretentious.

There is a lot of self-reference going on in this photograph. I'm blipping a blipper standing beside a print of a blip of another blipper, Oldmills. Did you get that? Nicholas told me that this project came directly out of his experience on blip, these being photographs taken opportunistically because he always had his camera with him, looking for blips. I think quite a buzz is going to develop around his work. It was getting quite busy when I had to tear myself away to go catch my train. If you can't get to the exhibition yourself then do take a look at the journal. This is one very talented and lovely guy!