Kenneth O’Halloran’s “Fair Trade”

FAIR TRADE

10 July 2010

Puck Fair, Killorglin, County Kerry, Ireland

Fairs in Ireland are more than places of trade, often forming an important social and cultural event in the county calendar. Women regard them as occasions worth dressing up for. Many fairs focus on horse-trading, carried out to a large extent by traveling people, who belong to an ancient Gaelic nomadic tradition. Some fairs have histories dating back for centuries. 

Kenneth O’Halloran’s project “Fair Trade” captures the flavor of a group of Gaelic nomads with a tradition of gathering on special occasions to trade horses, ponies and other goods. He says women regard the trading fairs “as occasions worth dressing up for, lending a kind of delicacy to the day, a femininity to counterweigh the spit-in-the-hand dealings of the men folk. There is a vibrancy of colour, red hair, freckles and a range of ensembles.”

O’Halloran is currently based in Dublin. Kenneth O'Halloran comes from a small village in the west of Ireland, where his father is the local undertaker. He completed a course in commercial photography at Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design (now IADT) in Dublin, and after graduating went on to work with Press 22, a photographic agency in Limerick. He then freelanced for a time in Dublin, before joining Independent Newspapers, where he worked for 15 years, ranging from news to sports photography, with regular trips to cover the conflict in Northern Ireland, and to European and World soccer championships.