Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A photographer's record of a vanished way of life.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Internationally famous documentary photographer Lange (1895-1965) spent six weeks in Ireland in 1954. This book of over 100 black-and-white photographs depicting the people and customs of Irish country life is the result of that trip. Lange took her camera to the countryside to photograph the lives of rural Irish shopkeepers, farmers, and schoolchildren involved in daily chores and in ordinary activity. Best known for her photographs of struggling migrant farm workers during the Great Depression (her trademark photograph is "Migrant Mother," Nipomo, California, 1936), Lange also concentrates on the people in this work, with the rural countryside as background. Throughout, the reader gets a sense of the lifestyle, concerns, and humanity of her subjects. The essays are informative and put the photographs in the context of today's Ireland‘not so very different from what Lange captured some 30 years ago. This beautiful book is recommended for all travel and photography collections.‘Janine A. Reid, Jefferson Cty. P.L., Lakewood, Col. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

There will be no finer book for St. Patrick's Day this year than this selection from the 2,400 exposures that Lange, premier photographer of the Great Depression among U.S. farmworkers, made mostly in western Ireland's County Clare in 1954. These pictures are as powerful and evocative as Lange's Depression work because of her deep affinity for farmers and farming communities. But whereas in America she had to deal with the massive disruption of agricultural life, in Ireland she was able to document a reasonably stable culture. Not a wealthy or cushy one in any way: the interiors of homes were very sparely furnished; the men's everyday work clothes smelled, Lange's son, Daniel Dixon, recalls, "like a compost pit" and their only other clothes were for Sunday mass; the market towns were dank and drab; and many of the young had to emigrate to find a livelihood. But the people Lange photographed are vital and warm, the countryside is obviously productive, and those spare households are clean and inviting. --Ray Olson