Oft in the stilly night,

Ere slumber’s chain has bound me, 

Sad mem’ry brings the light

Of other days around me. 

— Thomas Moore.

Walking down the cobblestone streets of Temple Bar on a grey Dublin morning, I smiled thinking how much the area had transformed since my student days at Trinity in the 1980’s. Dingy buildings stood on the narrow streets and lanes, where heroin dealers and addicts made it a no-go area after dark. Now roving bands of tourists navigate between trendy cafés and galleries, stopping for selfies outside themed ‘Oirish’ pubs. I was heading to the National Photographic Archive in Meeting House Square alongside the relocated Gallery of Photography (now Photo Museum Ireland) – both institutions that have helped make Temple Bar a centre for photographic arts. 

I had come to view a selection of glass plate negatives from the Lawrence Collection, specifically images of Kinsale that I hoped might inform a book project I was researching. The collection itself has an extraordinary history. Created primarily by photographer Robert French in the late nineteenth century for William Lawrence’s commercial studio, these images survived the destruction of the Easter Rising, decades of storage, and a near-miss with being scrapped for greenhouse glass before finding their way to the National Library of Ireland in 1943 for the remarkably modest sum of £300. 

Robert French in his later years, photographed around 1910. His characteristic long white beard and steady gaze suggest something of the meticulous craftsman who documented Ireland so thoroughly.

 In the reading room, I watched as the librarian, wearing white cotton gloves, carefully placed the first negative on the light table. Through the loupe, the level of detail French captured was astonishing. Here was Kinsale harbor in the 1890s, each sailing vessel distinct, every slate on the ascending terraces of houses clearly defined. The glass plate negative process may have been cumbersome – requiring French to transport a heavy camera, tripod, and cases of glass plates around the country – but the results were remarkable in their clarity.

There’s something deeply moving about examining these negatives in their original form. French would have handled these very plates, carefully composing each shot through his ground glass viewing screen, calculating exposure times, and later developing them in the Lawrence studio’s darkroom in Dublin. His methodical approach is evident in how he would return to the same vantage points years later to document changes in the landscape, creating an invaluable record of Ireland’s transformation during the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

 For a modest fee, I ordered high-resolution digital scans of several images. When the CD arrived a couple of weeks later, viewing the photographs on a large modern display revealed even more details than I’d spotted through the loupe. Each image contains countless small stories – food for the imagination. The Lawrence Collection includes over 120 photographs of Kinsale alone, many now viewable through the National Library’s online catalogue. While some entries are labelled “General view, Kinsale” – somewhat understating their rich visual content – the images themselves offer an extraordinary window into Irish life during a period of profound change.

French retired in 1914, just before Ireland itself would undergo revolutionary transformation. He had spent decades methodically documenting the country, travelling by rail with his heavy equipment to capture towns, villages, and landscapes throughout Ireland. His work survived not because he intended it as a historical record – these were commercial photographs sold as prints, postcards, and magic lantern slides – but because he approached each image with a craftsman’s care and precision. 

Leaving the archive that afternoon, I felt privileged to have examined these tangible connections to French’s work and the Ireland he documented. In our age of instantaneous digital photography, there’s something powerful about engaging with these carefully crafted images, each one the result of deliberate choices and technical skill. They remind us that the act of photography, at its best, is not just about capturing a moment but about preserving it with care and intention for future generations to discover. 

 Note: All photographs are from the Lawrence Collection, National Library of Ireland. The collection comprises over 40,000 glass plate negatives, of which approximately 30,000 were taken by Robert French between 1880 and 1914.