Early doors in the Local

This essay is the culmination of research published as part of the book that accompanies the retrospective exhibition Local by Pete Smyth, held at the Gallery of Photography Dublin 16 November 2019- 12 January 2020. The research examines Pete Smyth’s extensive photography project documenting aspects of life in West Tallaght, Dublin. One of Ireland’s leading socially engaged photographers, Smyth has lived and worked in the area for over 30 years, producing in that time a uniquely intimate account of the place and its people. The essay foregrounds an interest in the particular qualities brought on by engagement and local awareness. As a photographer working from within his own community, the abandonment of the kind of threshold normally mediating documentary work and those it considers is significant in Smyth's work. The research also considers working and non-working class cultures, reappraising the known histories of documentary photography in contemporary Ireland.