Brendan Jackman, Waterford at the opening of his first solo Photographic Exhibition at the Index Gallery Central Library Lady Lane.
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Arts events are few and infrequent at the start of a year, so it is especially welcome to have HORIZON, a photographic exhibition by Brendan Jackman, at the fine and accessible Index Space at the City Library Lady Lane.
I first noticed Jackman’s fine work at a City And Guilds show at WIT, last year and this new solo show continues his exciting images and control of digital colour that shows real feelings for the topic or subject rather than a display of technical skill.
Yes, the technical aspects are there, but there is a lot more happening in these images. You get the romance of Viennese opera, the fine monuments, tourists in horse drawn carriages, streetscapes, the mellow yellow glow at the rows of boxes of the great and good at the Statsoper and you can feel the music in these images. Jackman’s eye and ear are there too like in good photo-journalism.
On a chilly but sunny winter morning, I loved the warmth, the bright yellow tones of the Austrian Schonbrunn Palace, side by side with a solitary robin on a rock.
Jackman has an almost cinematic understanding of light, natural light and artificial light and his studies of this more than illuminate the orange glow of happiness of the Wallace Plaza for Skyfest, or how a quick pan of the camera turns a firework burst into a meteor shower. Then there is a plane landing against a battery of runway lighting or the different tones and levels of light that make the Vienna opera house come alive.
A shot of the new Suir bridge catches the central beam of light as it seems to point up a sense of new hope, new direction and continuity.
He makes a routine shot of Benbulben as mystical as W B Yeats thought the place was and go and see how he uses the box gutter and drainpipe to see another aspect of Reginald’s Tower.
This is a good start to exhibitions in Waterford, go and see how Brandan Jackman sees the world.
Photos: George Goulding
