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Creative Generations Portrait Photography Exhibition Launch
The launch of the Creative Generations Portrait Photography Exhibition took place on 1 May in ATU’s Yeats Library in Sligo.
The launch of the Creative Generations Portrait Photography Exhibition took place on 1 May in ATU’s Yeats Library in Sligo.
The exhibition is part of an intergenerational photography project which ran on the ATU Sligo campus this semester as part of the university’s Creative Generations Festival 2025. The exhibition of curiously intriguing and beautiful portraits is an inspiring example of what can happen when spaces are intentionally crafted for intergenerational learning and artistic collaboration.
The eight artists are children from An Cuan, the Senior Autism Class in St Brendan’s National School, Cartron Point in Sligo and volunteers from the university’s intergenerational programme, Marie Hanmore-Cawley from Boyle and Micheál Mac Giolla Rí from Sligo.
The 10 portraits exhibited with faces of younger and older merged and layered together are a celebration of connection between generations, between different ways of seeing, and between people who might not usually get the chance to create artwork together.
The artists used processes which depend on the reciprocal relationship of two methods of photography. The first is the technology of digital photography. The second is Cyanotype, the oldest photographic printing process in the history of photography. Cyanotype photography is a camera-less technique that involves laying an object on paper painted with a solution of iron salts before exposing it to UV light and washing with water to create stunning white and Prussian blue images.
The exhibition will run in the ATU Sligo Yeats Library for the month of May.
The intergenerational photography project was led by Artist Anna Leask, and final year students from the Social Care Practice Degree, Rachel Herward, Brona Coyle, May Palmiano and Sorcha McCormack.
Thanks to Yeats Library Head Librarian, Johanna Archbold and the library team for hosting the exhibition for the Creative Generations Festival.
The Creative Generations Festival 2025 is part of Global Intergenerational Week 2025, and is funded by ATU’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Office.
