Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary

“It takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary,” photographer David Bailey said of his craft.

It’s the 'extraordinary’ that creates a memorable photograph, and this Thursday Mullingar’s Matt Nolan will launch a book containing hundreds of memorable pictures, all taken around Westmeath, predominantly in the Mullingar area.

His 200 page+ 'Mullingar. Time Goes By’ is being launched at Mullingar Arts Centre this Thursday November 5, at 7.30pm.

The proceeds of the book sales are going to The North Westmeath Hospice, and formally launching the book for Matt will be Veronica Larkin of the hospice fundraising committee.

For more than 40 years, Matt has been taking pictures, finding his inspiration among the everyday activities of his life, and among the people he encounters every day.

If there’s an area in which Matt excels, it’s in his character photographs – shots capturing his subject in a familiar environment: either at their work, or engaging in a favourite past time or hobby, and the book contains fabulous pictures of people at work, at play, at ease – and for anyone who grew up in this area, it will bring back to life dozens of familiar faces, places and events.
“There’s an explanation with each photo of where it was taken and telling something about the subject of the picture,” says Matt, who is originally from Ballygar, and who arrived in Mullingar in 1972 to take up a job with the Shannon Regional Fisheries Board.

There’s been a lot of interest since Matt announced he had this book with the printer.

“People say: tell me about the book, and I tell them this is a book of photos going back over 40 years in Mullingar, and a book of stories about Mullingar going back 40 years, about people and events and places.

“There’s stories of pilgrimages – for example, a great picture of the remains of the friars found in Austin Friars Street, and it was clear that those friars had done the pilgrimage to Compostela 600 years ago – and now we have a lot of people doing pilgrimages to Mullingar, because of Joe Dolan and Niall Horan,” he jokes.

Joe Dolan features, but so too do dozens of ordinary people doing ordinary things.

“More than anything else, it’s about people like Mary Lynch, of Kneadsbridge,” says Matt.

“Every evening at 5pm she went out of the pub and left the customers to serve themselves as she went down to Mass in the Camillians.

“Every Christmas, she had a Mass said for her customers, for their safe return home, and as far as I know, nothing ever happened anyone coming from or going to her pub.

“This is also a book that tells the story about the styles and the cars and the changes that have taken place over the years.

“When you put these pictures in a book you hope that maybe in a hundred years’ time, people will look back through these and get some idea of what we were like at the end of the second millennium.”

Writer and historian, Marian Keaney, has written the foreword to the book, which also contains tributes to those involved in Ireland’s struggle of 1916.
'Mullingar. Time Goes By’ will be on sale in local shops, and at Thursday’s launch night. It can also be bought online via Amazon.