A month in the Gaeltacht. There is an aliveness to this place. Everything is in a constant state of flux: enormous tides, cold water, wind and rain. Ground so soft, it breathes. Rivers in the sky, hammering down, the sun out only for a little while, always moving, always changing. It’s rugged. It’s harsh. Yet unimaginably beautiful.
It’s no wonder the language kept alive in this place is as contextual as it is. Everything transforms, and it seems like the language might be as well. Slowly, slowly every day, chipping away, learning a little and a lot from people who know much more than I do. It’s overwhelming how complex and varied people’s relationships to place and mother tongue can be in such a small, but vibrant patch of the world.
I haven’t shared much about what I’ve been up to over the past year on social media, but now feels like a good time to do so. In 2025, alongside a busy year of commercial photography work, I was also studying full-time. As part of a Master of Research in anthropology, I have been researching the history, politics and phenomenology of the Irish language and designing a research project that explores its significance in people’s lives today.
I’ve just arrived in the northwest of Ireland, where I’ll be based while doing my anthropological fieldwork. Over the next few months, I hope to speak to as many people as possible about what the language means to them. I’ll also be learning Irish myself to better understand how language influences speakers’ perception and their connection to place, identity and community.
This has all come about because over the last few years, while working on a personal photo project in Ireland, I have been slowly learning about the language revival happening in the country and throughout the Irish diaspora. The language’s presence in Irish political discourse, pop culture, and other social movements is hard to ignore. I’m interested in why this is happening at this particular moment in time and what the story of the Irish language might tell us about the complex relations between colonialism, identity and belonging to place, not just in Ireland but in any colonial or post-colonial society.
While I’m primarily here for the research, I also plan to continue documenting the landscapes of Ireland’s west. A big part of what keeps bringing me back to this part of the world is how quickly and dramatically the landscape can change as wild weather blown in from the Atlantic sweeps across it. These images were all taken in the space of an hour this morning while walking near the cabin I’ll be calling home during my fieldwork.
