Stunning black and white photographs by Motoko Fujita of Chapelizod and the Phoenix Park, with essays by leading Dublin Joyceans.

This is a homage to James Joyce, whose last great masterpiece Finnegans Wake had its locale in Chapelizod, where the river Liffey begins its last descent out to sea. Contemporary Japanese photographer Motoko Fujita captures the spirit and body of this historic village on Dublin’s fringes, and the enclosure of Phoenix Park that surrounds it. In over sixty stunning black and white images, she walks the viewer through a townscape and landscape little changed in the seventy years since Joyce’s death, commemorating as did he the essences of a natural world fixed in time. The result is an immersive journey of recall and renewal.

Nine essay texts by Joyceans, local scholars and historians shadow and enlarge upon these original photographs. They include contributions from Senator David Norris, the actor Barry McGovern, the academic Sam Slote, John McCullen, landscape historian and Chief Park Superintendent in Phoenix Park since 1984. Joyce’s celebrated textual editor Danis Rose writes about ‘The Strange Case of the Disappearing Bread: Bloom’s Budget for 16 June 1904’. Biographer W.J. McCormack describes ‘Sheridan Le Fanu and Greater Chapelizod‘, while the late Thomas MacGiolla and Raphy Doyle evoke their native environ. Japanese professor Shigehisa Yoshizu concludes with a commentary on the Fujita photographs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MOTOKO FUJITA is a photographic artist and native of Fukuoka in Japan. Since 2003 she has been based in Dublin, working mainly as a music photographer. She studied at Baiko Gakuin University (MA), Shimonoseki City, Japan, where she first encountered James Joyce.