Press release
New Photographic Portraits of pioneering activists within the LGBTQI movement in Ireland comes to Dublin Castle’s Coach House Gallery
Published on
Last updated on
Published on
Last updated on
The OPW are delighted to host a new exhibition showcasing the photographic portraits of pioneering activists within the LGBTQI movement in Ireland. The Exhibition was launched by Minister for Culture, Heritage and Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan TD, in Dublin Castle’s Coach House Gallery and will run until 29 September.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which in 1969 launched the second wave of the Gay Rights movement. Pathfinders is an on-going national and cross-border project, the brainchild of Paul Connell, to create an archive of photographic portraits of the pioneer activists within the LGBTQI movement in Ireland. These portraits showcase those men and women whose involvement helped paved the way for many social changes which Ireland has witnessed over the recent years.
Minister Madigan said:
"The Pathfinders Archive is a signature photographic record of the older LGBTQI members on the island of Ireland who for decades fought the good fight, often under fear of persecution or prosecution, paving the way for the freedoms that everyone enjoys today. This exhibition aims to give a visibility and recognition to those pioneers and their valuable contribution, with Pathfinders as a testimony to their achievements."
Paul Connell stated:
"Having personally experienced the once unimaginable advances of the LGBTQI movement, I have also witnessed the naked hatred and ignorance the movement had to overcome in order to find its voice. In the current political atmosphere, I find an ever-greater significance in the words, ‘Lest we forget’."
The recent political advances made nationally suggested a need to revisit the aspirations of those early pioneers, whose voices are not often recognised, and sometimes ignored, within the discourses of the current generation, caught up as they often are in the euphoria of social recognition and equality.
ENDS
Photography will be available after the event from Lafayette Photography kelvin.hughes42@gmail.com
For further information, please contact Client Services and Communications Unit at opwcsc@opw.ie or 087 1470617.
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