Book of photographs sheds light on days gone by

A NEW book which uses lovingly-taken and carefully-kept photographs to evoke memories of bygone times will be launched tonight.

The Light of Other Days is a collection of pictures by photographer and retired RTÉ cameraman Donal Wylde and has been described as “a thought-provoking, beautiful and captivating photographic record” of life in Tipperary during the 1960s and 1970s.

Formerly a photographer with the Clonmel-based The Nationalist newspaper, Mr Wylde has assembled a collection of images from town and county life at a time when the area was at its most diverse economically, politically and socially.

Some of the places captured in the photographs have long since disappeared or been obscured by change, while the collection aims to highlight the sense of community that existed and the conditions in which people prayed, worked and took their leisure.

“Change is one of the few things that we can be sure will happen,” Mr Wylde said. “In my working lifetime, monumental technological changes have happened in photography, printing reproduction and media communication.”

He compared such changes to the invention of the printing press by William Caxton in the 15th century.

“In parallel today, television news gathering has altered from film to analogue tape and digital-image captured on disc to solid-state flash cards. Today photography, in all its many forms, is an everyday tool for many and camera-phones are commonplace,” he said.

“As a child I was fortunate to have access to and knew people who were familiar with good cameras. This grew into a passion and, gradually, an obsession with capturing scenes, events and images which have now vanished forever. These moments in time are gone now but the pictures remain on film, now digitised.”

The book, which will be launched tonight in South Tipperary County Museum in Clonmel, was edited by Mr Wylde’s former colleague in RTÉ, Peter McNiff, and will be available to buy from tomorrow.

Some of the images have been transformed into an exhibition with the assistance of the museum and will be on display, also from tomorrow. Admission to the museum is free.