Stone and Salt Water

Situated eight miles from Cork City, Passage West was once the port for Cork, a nexus for transportation of goods and people and a centre for shipbuilding and repair. It declined in the mid 1900s with the closing of the dockyard and the railway, stagnating during the lean decades after the war when economic hardship, unemployment and emigration affected much of Ireland. The last twenty-five years have seen its renewal as a satellite town for the burgeoning IT and pharmaceutical industries in Cork city and nearby Ringaskiddy. It is a town in transition, where the physical reminders of its industrial past sit alongside the new housing estates and amenities that burgeoned during the Celtic Tiger. 

In this book of photographs, Mark McGranaghan uses the reminiscences of those who grew up in the town during its years of decline to examine the connections between those memories and feelings of attachment and belonging to the town. While their reminiscences were tinged with sadness and loss and the recollection of hardship, this was not an impotent yearning for an idealized past. The recollections were also full of humour, affection for place, and acceptance of change. As is the way with memory, it was the small idiosynchratic details in their accounts that conveyed meaning. 

‘Belonging’, a sense of ease that a person has with themselves in their surroundings, is anchored not just in place but in time. Remembering what connects us to a place reaffirms that sense of belonging, providing continuity when a place is rapidly changing. The images in this work examine the layers of time – history, personal memory, and the present – that exist in our surroundings. They depict locations that are not just the physical reminders of a past that will never return. For those who grew up here they are also locations which activate significant personal memories related to how they formed, and maintain, their place identity. The images invite the viewer to access their own reverie and reminiscences and to reflect upon their own place identity. 

At a less explicit level, the work provides a starting point for reflection about the sanitizing/neutralizing impact on place of regeneration projects, and the possible ‘gentrification’ of traditionally working class communities as a consequence of urban development.

Publisher - Mark McGranaghan

Language - English

Case Bound - PPC

Contributors

By author

Mark McGranaghan

Published Date - 2025-07-19

ISBN - 9781036928766

Dimensions - 21 x 29.7 x 1 cm

Page Count - 66