Traveller

In 1965 the photographer Alen MacWeeney began a two year project photographing and recording the songs and stories of Travelling Communities in Galway and on Dublin’s Cherry Orchard Halting Site. Over thirty years later, he and John T. Davis teamed up to co-direct Traveller, a visually exquisite film which documents MacWeeney’s attempt to find the Travellers in his photographs.

A fascinating collaboration between two visual artists with distinctive and differing points of view, Traveller charts the distance between subject and observer, between still and moving images, between personal and social territories. The film is shot in rich black and white, offering as it unfolds a series of glimpses into Ireland’s enigmatic ‘hidden’ culture, and raising unsettling questions about mainstream perceptions of and attitudes towards this stubbornly independent people.

Traveller is presented here in the best available version from John T. Davis’ personal collection.