Alen Macweeney

In 1965, Alen MacWeeney came upon an encampment of itinerants in a waste ground by the Cherry Orchard Fever Hospital outside Dublin. Then called tinkers and later formally styled Travellers (as they preferred to call themselves) by the Irish government, they were living in hard-used by richly coloured caravans, ramshackle sheds, and time-worn tents.

MacWeeney was captivated by their independence, individuality and endurance, despite the bleakness of their circumstances. MacWeeney became accepted by the travellers and began to take photographs of them. In a moving essay about days and nights among them, he writes: Theirs was a bigger way of life than mine, with its daily struggle for survival, compared to my struggle to find images symbolic and representative of that life.

Over five years he spent many evenings in the Travellers caravans and by their campfires, drinking tea and listening to their tales, songs and music. In this book, MacWeeney has created a superb record of a vanishing way of life and a photographic masterwork.