SOUTHERN CROSS: Documentary Photography, the Celtic Tiger and a Future yet to Come

Abstract

This chapter reflects on Mark Curran’s documentary photography project SOUTHERN CROSS. Completed between 1999 and 2001, the project was a critical response to the rapid economic development witnessed in the Republic of Ireland at the turn of the new millenium. Focused on Dublin and the surrounding region, it critically mapped and surveyed the spaces of development and finance, presenting the newly globalised landscape transformed in response to the migration of global capital. Addressing projects documenting the impact of the Celtic Tiger, Colin Graham described SOUTHERN CROSS as ‘evidence of the rasping, clawing deformation of the landscape, the visceral human individual in the midst of burgeoning idea of progress-as-building, propped up by finance-as-economics…it stands as an extraordinary warning of the future that was then yet to come’.