Arthur Fields ‘Your man on the bridge’

Arthur Fields,

street photographer

BY LLOYD GORMAN

If a photograph is worth a thousand words then street photographer Arthur Fields is on a par with any – or perhaps even all – of the greatest writers to ever come out of Dublin. It is estimated in the more than fifty years he stood on the south end of O’Connell Bridge with a camera and sign around his neck that he took more than 180,000 photographs of people and the occasional celebrity, including Brendan Behan, as they passed by. Arthurs trick was to pretend to take a photograph to get their attention and if they stopped then he snapped the real photo, giving them a number and ticket for them to pay for it. Between the 1930s and 1988 the split seconds of ordinary life his camera captured the almost imperceptible but inevitable change from what we might think of as an old fashioned black and white world to a contemporary one in bright colour. The long gone Nelson’s Column and cars parking in the middle of O’Connell St were just some of the things spotted in the background of the portraits of pedestrians. He could always be found in the same spot, plying his trade through sun and snow and whatever else the elements had to offer. Everyday he – and his brother who was also a street photographer – walked the nearly seven miles to his work from his home in Raheny to the centre of the capital. Arthurs wife developed all the photographs under the stairs in their house and also did all the administration and sorting out of photographs for customers. He became as much a part of the fabric of the city which was his family’s adopted home and it was said that Daniel O’Connell’s statue protected O’Connell Street, O’Connell Bridge was protected by Arthur Fields. He was born Abraham Feldman in Dublin in 1901 to

Ukrainian emigrants but he developed the name to fit into this foreign land. His Jewish parents fled antisemitism in Kiev in 1885 who settled in Dublin. According to Yad Vashem The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in the wake of the assassination of Russian Tsar Alexander II and unrest in Ukraine there was a pogrom in Kiev in which several Jews were murdered and more than a thousand Jewish homes and shops were attacked and destoryed. Arthurs handiwork has been recognised in recent years with thousands of donated pictures displayed in the ‘Man on the bridge’ exhibit in the Gallery of Photography Ireland several years ago, two books published since then and a documentary on RTE TV. There is also the Arthur Fields: Man on Bridge facebook site where more than 7,000 shots, including with names and details, have been added and more are welcomed. Dublin couple Trevor and Sonia Farrell have called Joondalup home for nearly twenty years but are amongst the countless numbers of people with an emotional connection to this part of Dublin’s rich history. Both of them are lucky enough to still have photos of their own parents when they were young, happy and out and about as a couple, true candid camera stuff. Sonia actually has three pictures of late mum Patricia and dad Laurence Driscoll (see page 24) while Trevor has a great shot of his father Thomas Farrell and mum Alice (see below) as well as a very worn but cherished image of him as a young boy with his parents and some (but not all) of his brothers and sisters (see page 24). A photograph might be worth a thousand words but sometimes there are just no words for how precious and irreplaceable these keepsakes are.