HOLD FAST — Street Art in Dublin

I’ve been looking through old folders in Lightroom lately — tidying the library, finding images I never posted. It’s a quiet way to pass time, and it has helped a little with the grief following the death of a dearly loved and deeply missed family member this summer.

One of the images that I stopped on after browsing a few folders was this: two painted fists on a Dublin wall, the words HOLD FAST across the knuckles, there weren’t many from this location but this one version really stood out.

Dublin is often best seen away from the main thoroughfares like Grafton Street and O’Connell Street. This scene caught my eye back in April 2014 and again on browsing through my Lightroom library. Looking at it again now, the words carry a little more weight and at the time I wasn’t aware of its meaning.

The mural

The work is by ADW, a Dublin street artist working in murals, commissions, limited edition prints and more, who has produced some of the most interesting and famous pieces in Ireland. Here, in this scene two large fists grip a horizontal bar, with a heart replacing the O in HOLD. Hold Fast is a phrase with nautical roots, but here on a city wall it reads just as readily as a few words of positive encouragement: hang on, keep going, don’t let go.

The mural is long gone but with this placement thousands of Luas commuters would have been seeing the artwork and its message daily.

His recent projects include a year-long Celtic and Roman Calendar Series painted month by month on Liberty Lane in Dublin, a mural for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council in Deansgrange, and the Mother After Dark area at Electric Picnic.

First Fortnight

The mural was made to highlight the 2013 First Fortnight Festival, Ireland’s mental health arts and culture festival. Through music, theatre, spoken word and visual art, First Fortnight opens up conversations about mental health and challenges the stigma that can make those conversations difficult.

That context gives the mural another layer. A short phrase, painted large enough to catch the eye from across the street, offers encouragement in a place where anyone can encounter it.

Photographing the everyday

I photographed it on an overcast April day as two colourful women walked past, one with that red overcoat, the other with red hair; both holding fast to their belongings, neither seemingly noticing the simple message above.

The soft light kept the detail in the painted wall and concrete, although I would happily have photographed this scene in strong sidelight too. The railings, traffic lights and road signs are all part of the frame: the everyday clutter around a piece of street art.

Twelve years later, a little time spent looking through old photographs brought me back to that day and the mental calm and enjoyment when photographing whether that be landscapes or streetscapes, not to mention the process of editing images, a calming endeavour in itself.

HOLD FAST by ADW — street art in Dublin, with everyday foot traffic giving the wall its scale.