About

For the past nineteen years, Christopher Barr has been photographing the world of an Irish Traveller family and their associates at Irish horse fairs and their day to day life. As well as exploring the interrelationship between man and animal that is an inextricable aspect of such events, this body of work has a much deeper resonance. More specifically it is an exploration into the world of Irish traveling community. Barr highlights the importance of the horse fair to the traveller, a vital link to past and present and future. The body of work importantly also explores the concepts of identity and alienation. Barrs photographs echo the faced paced modes of speech used by the family and are an allegory for the family in which he has been welcomed. Barrs acceptance into the world of the Irish Traveller has afforded him a unique view of the inner workings of life in which at first glance may seem ordinary, even uneventful but on investigation have a darkness imposed by institutionalised racism that holds true to the subject. The work is a metaphor for an identity being gradually and purposely eroded by the modernisation of a nation. The work has been featured in British Journal of Photography and widely exhibited internationally.