The photography of Doug Dubois helps capture childhood

Doug Dubois’ images of a Cobh estate are a glimpse into the world of childhood, says Richard Fitzpatrick

Mon, 09 Nov, 2015 - 00:00

Richard Fitzpatrick

DOUG DUBOIS was invited to do a residency at the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh, Co. Cork in 2009. While there, the American photographer teamed up with a group of local young adults interested in photography. A couple from the group, Eirn and Kevin, invited him into their neighbourhood, Russell Heights, as a way into their world, just as the Irish economy was falling down around their ears.

“I realised that neighbourhood is pretty wonderful and interesting and complicated, in some ways a world unto itself,” he says.

“A way to see it was through the eyes of young people, particularly those that are on the threshold of adulthood. That moment, I felt, had a relationship to the Irish economy in the sense that if you’re coming of age in 2009, you largely grew up during the Celtic Tiger, there was a sustained period of economic growth in Ireland and then it suddenly shifted – your horizons were lowered. It was another landscape entirely. The work is understood within that context.”

DuBois was photographing Eirn in a birthday dress in her parents’ back garden on a summer’s evening when she gifted him the title for what has become an acclaimed exhibition, My Last Day at Seventeen. It is accompanied by an illustrated book, and will be running at the Crawford Art Gallery over the winter months.

Eirn’s throwaway remark helped DuBois crystalise the theme for his project, which is a classic coming-of-age story. The photos have an ethereal quality that capture the way the world seems a bigger place when seen from the vantage point of childhood.

“There are no adults in the pictures. It is only kids,” he says. “I wanted to take this really small, little neighbourhood — we’re talking about two blocks — and give it a mythic quality, which stems from childhood. Wherever you grew up looms large in your imagination because it is your entire world. A lot of the photos are orchestrated and set up and performed. Everything is photographed over summer. It’s an eternal summer in this book that I created. It’s sunny more often than not. The neighbourhood has a scale. It’s bigger and a bit grander than if you just casually walked into it.”

Pictures from the exhibition, My Last Day at Seventeen

TIGHT-KNIT FAMILIES

DuBois spent five summers doing the project, weeks of which were spent tracking down parents for “release” permissions. One of the things that struck DuBois from his time embedded in Russell Heights, having grown up in an American suburb where people are more private, is how tight-knit the families are amongst the clutch of houses he was portraying.

“The neighbourhood has its own politics,” he says. “It’s like what people say about either a small neighbourhood or small towns — everybody knows everyone else, everybody knows each other’s business. That’s a good and a not-so-good thing. It can feel stifling as well, but I found it’s quite a wonderful environment to grow up in.

“There’s a picture of Jordan up a pole, way up the light-pole hanging off. That kid had run up to me and said, ‘Take a picture of me up the pole’. Before I knew it, he was way up in the air. I coaxed him down, saying ‘I’m not ready. Wait, wait, wait.’ I use a big camera and put a dark cloth over my head; it’s a very slow process, the photos take a long time to set up. I got it all set up, got everything right, and up he goes.

“The second after I made that photograph — I make one exposure — and three women come bursting out of their houses, screaming at him to come down the pole, none of which were his mother because she lived down the street and couldn’t see him from her vantage point. It wasn’t the first time he’d done it: ‘Didn’t we tell you not to go up that pole!’ They were looking out for him. That was my second summer. I realised I was always being watched. Eyes were always on you. It’s a marvellous way to grow up. Somebody always has your back.”

An image from ‘My Last Day At Seventeen’ by US photographer Doug DuBois. The pictures were taken over six years at Russell Heights in Cobh, Co Cork.

ROLLING JOINTS

DuBois’s pictures catch the kids from Russell Heights getting up to all kinds of japes, from cocking fake guns à la Travis Bickle, rolling joints, loafing around and doing summersaults to diving off piers. One that particularly resonates with DuBois is a commanding pose by a girl called Simone taken outside her house in her pyjamas.

“She was one of my favourite kids to photograph,” says DuBois. “She had three sisters and two brothers, or something like that – a big family. They swirled around the neighbourhood, playing games. In some ways, they felt they ruled this one patch of grass right in front of their house.

“Simone was a dynamo, very intense, often hard to get to cooperate when I was working with this big camera, but when I could get her attention, and get her focused, she was incredible and completely there. There is a picture of her in this pink onesie on the grass, arms akimbo, just looking at me. I like that photograph — I just like her presence, her confidence, but also the tension between the little kids’ clothes, she’s an ambiguous age in the picture, and her pose. It’s quite grey. That’s what coming of age is about — you’re in between. Identity is just being formed and you’re still tied to your childhood. Part of that is in that picture.”