Editor's Note: The Dublin contest took place in 2022, and we regret the delay in announcing the winners on our website, which was due to a miscommunication. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. William Fagan submitted the results promptly and is not responsible in any way for the delay in this announcement.

Attendees to the LSI Conference and Annual Meeting were given a photo challenge as part of their activities. The walk took place on the afternoon of Friday 14th October 2022 and was built around themes relating to the part of Dublin in which the Conference was located. As conference chair, I organized the categories for the photo walk, which were as follows:

Find a Bar of Lemon Soap
Be a Georgian
Win an Oscar
Get a Trinity Education
Capture Cartier Bresson's Birds

And for a special bonus prize (unlikely to be won!) Find Bono’s Sheep

About a third of the conference attendees submitted images, which is good for any conference. It was immediately clear from the entries that people had grasped the nature of this competition, which was supposed to be a fun thing to capture Dublin and its culture.

Read below for the winners of each category.

Theme 1: Find a Bar of Lemon Soap.

Sweny’s Chemists Shop, where Leopold Bloom bought a bar of Lemon Soap in James Joyce’s Ulysses, is just across the street from the conference hotel and still sells the product 118 years later. The object here was not just to find a bar of Lemon Soap, but rather to capture the intellectual and humorous nature of Joyce and his work.

The winner by Alexander Schmeh may appear to be a simple interior photo, but it captures the glorious antique mayhem of Sweny’s and also P.J. Murphy serenading his guests with a song, accompanied by his guitar playing. The tourists with their ubiquitous smartphones bring us right up to 2022. And, yes, there are 4 bars of Lemon Soap in the photo.

For an honourable mention under this theme, I am awarding this to Jan Veldsink for this humorous image which could have been entered under two different themes. It is called ‘Oscar Did’.

Theme 2: Be a Georgian

The area in which the conference was held is called Georgian Dublin because of its 18th Century architecture built in the times of various British King Georges. The main areas include Merrion and Fitzwilliam Squares, but Georgian buildings are to found in the surrounding streets

The winner in this case went slightly outside of the big squares to Dawson Street and Dublin’s Mansion House, which was built at the dawn of the Georgian era. This shows beret-wearing Irish Military veterans standing outside the Mansion House (the home of the Lord Mayor of Dublin), The photographer was our own beret-wearing member Sean Sweeney. Check out Sean’s Instagram page @seansweeney2017 where he shows photos of many Dublin citizens won over by the ‘man with a beret’ (and a Leica, of course).

The honourable mention in this category goes to Wilbur Norman who captured this scene in Fitzwilliam Square, I think. I would never have noticed this in a million years. I should add that I have visited many buildings in this square over the years and I can assure everyone that the people living there are both warm and welcoming and don’t use lions or spooks to scare away visitors.

Theme 3: Win an Oscar.

This theme related to Irish author and playwright, Oscar Wilde, whose father’s house is just two doors away from the conference hotel and whose statute sits in Merrion Square, which is the address of the house. The day after the conference ended was Oscar Wilde’s birthday and the house was open for visitors. Some of our members took advantage of this to visit the house. Finally, isn’t it good to have Leica Society International members looking for someone called ‘Oscar’?

One of the important aspects of Oscar Wilde, and, indeed, a lot of other Irish people, was his way with words. The winner here is Richard Hall with this simple photo of one of Wilde’s most famous sayings. Some say that the Irish are more verbal than visual. This concept was proven by another Irish writer, George Bernard Shaw, who was photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt while wielding a Leica, but he was much better with words than he was with a camera.

The honourable mention under this theme goes to Stan Shire who took this photo of a statute of Constance Lloyd, Oscar’s wife, looking somewhat back towards his statue. She may have once gone ‘wild for an Oscar’, but she found out, eventually, that this was a waste of time.

Theme 4: Get a Trinity Education

Trinity College Dublin is the oldest university in the city. Its back gate is about 50 yards from the conference hotel. It is the site to which many tourists go to see the Book of Kells and Trinity Library, but the focus here was intended to be on the students, past and present. At least one or more conference attendees studied at Trinity as did the brother of Dr Andreas Kaufmann, the Chairman of Leica AG.

The winner under this theme was this photo by Kannan Palanisamy of a young man and a young woman giving each other a ‘Trinity education’. What also made this photo for me was the man ‘in the bokeh area’ looking back at the amorous scene.

This theme was a close-run thing between the photo above and this marvelously evocative, particularly for me, photo by Alan Weinschel. The photo shows an older person sitting on a bench looking out at the almost empty sports field in Trinity College. Just in front of the bench are the barely discernable markings of a grass running track. These bring me back 60 years or more when my late father, who was a civil servant, brought my older brother and myself to the Civil Service Sports in Trinity to compete against the children of other civil servants. The race that my brother and I were entered in was the 200 or 220 yards or 200 metres. As I came around the bend on the grass track I thought that I was doing alright, but when we hit the straight, all I could see were the bigger boys, including my older brother, zooming away from me into the distance. Thus ended my athletic career. Thanks, Alan, for bringing back those wonderful memories.

Theme 5: Capture Cartier Bresson’s Birds

This theme is based upon a photograph taken in the early 1950s by the French master photographer Henri Cartier Bresson at the pond in St Stephen’s Green, Dublin. It features people sitting and people passing through and some gulls and ducks on the pond and prominent amongst all of this is a Daughters of Charity nun with her distinctive headwear with wings called a ‘cornette’. These were worn by the order until 1964. When I was very young in the early 1950s my father often brought my older brother and myself into St Stephens Green on a Sunday morning and there was always at least one of the Daughters of Charity sitting at the side of the pond. It is a permanent childhood memory for me.

What I was looking for was not just the pond or the birds, but also people sitting in that part of St Stephen’s Green and the general ambience. I did not expect a nun with a ‘cornette’ to be sitting there or passing by 58 years after the headwear had disappeared. The winner is Keith Walker with this image of a young woman having something to eat with birds nearby. One thing that has changed over the years is that birds, particularly swans, expect to be fed and present themselves for feeding in a much more aggressive way these days.

This demand to be fed can reach nuisance levels, particularly at seaside places where gulls have been known to capture the contents of an ice cream cone (or should that be cornet?) while the ‘owner’ was trying to consume it. The Honourable Mention image in this category is by Jonathan Smith and it shows the birds from the opposite side of the benches. I like the one, two, three symmetry of the groups of people in this, but I doubt if the photographer noticed this. I certainly would not have seen this at the time of taking the photograph.

Theme 6 (Bonus Theme): Find Bono’s Sheep

This theme is based upon the fact that when Bono became a Freeman of the City of Dublin, he became entitled to graze his sheep in St Stephen’s Green. Foolishly thinking that people would give up after finding no sheep in the park, I thought that we might not have to award this prize. But, I was wrong, as participants showed a lot of creativity in tackling this theme.

The winner was Arthur Beesley and his image even surprised me. I was born in Dublin over 70 years ago and I have lived here for most of that time and I never noticed this ram’s head over the door of the Ulster Bank in Baggot Street just yards away from St Stephen’s Green. There is a joke here in that if Bono could not mind his sheep in a park, he could easily mind them in (or on) a bank. There is a slightly sad aspect to this as the Ulster Bank is now closing down here in Dublin. I’m sure, though, that the building is ‘listed’ and will survive.

For the Honourable Mention I have chosen this image by Michael Clements. I had dropped hints about what comes from sheep and several people adapted the wool theme into their photos. In this case, Michael has brought a sheep made of wool to St Stephen’s Green and placed it on the ground. Next he seems to have got on the ground to take this image. I’m impressed with his fortitude and determination to get the shot he wanted.

I am sure that, as with all photo competitions, some people will be bemused with the results. What I was looking for, as a judge, was how well photographers captured the nature of Dublin and its people through the various themes. Everyone involved in this competition succeeded in doing this and the final results were down to my own personal perceptions of how well this was done. In the case of two of the winners, they might have won on more than one theme, but I took steps to avoid any duplication of winners or, indeed, honourable mentions. As it turned out, we had, out of 12 winners and honourable mentions, 6 from the US, 3 from the UK and one each from Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark. This was a truly international result, which was not organized. It just came out that way.

I hope that everyone had fun doing this

William Fagan

Dublin - 17th November 2022