'There was no one around': Cian O’Connor on his lockdown images of Dingle
One of the images from Dingle, by Cian O’Connor.
Five years on from the first COVID lockdown, of March 2020, many look back on the pandemic years with a certain nostalgia. They remember the Great Pause, the first time in their adult lives they had the chance to step off the treadmill and reassess their values and priorities.
For Cian O’Connor, it was something else entirely. Having recently completed his degree at the National Film School in Dun Laoghaire, he had moved home to Dingle, Co Kerry while he tried to figure out what to do next. “I had terrible job prospects, and most of my relationships and friendships had broken down,” he says. “I had existential malaise. I was like, I've got to move to New York. I’ll start a new life and become a new person. I was getting all geared up for that. I’d bought my visa, I was about to buy my plane ticket, I was just going to get the hell out of Ireland.
