Arthur Fields (photographer) facts for kids
Arthur Fields (born Abraham Feldman; 1901–1994) was a famous Irish street photographer. He was known for taking over 180,000 photos of people walking on O'Connell Bridge in Dublin. He did this for more than 50 years!
Contents
Arthur Fields: A Life in Pictures
Early Life and Photography
Arthur Fields was born into a Jewish family in Ukraine. His family moved to Dublin in 1885 to escape difficult times in their home country.
Arthur first owned a sound studio. There, people could record their own voices. Later, he started taking photos after buying a simple box camera. He later switched to a Polaroid instant camera. His brother was also a photographer on the same bridge.
Capturing Dublin's History
Arthur Fields' many photos are like a visual diary of Dublin. They show how the city changed from the 1930s to the 1980s. You can see different fashions and shop fronts over the years. Nelson's Pillar, a famous monument, often appeared in his pictures. It was later destroyed in 1966.
Arthur took about 182,500 photos of people on the bridge. He worked there from the early 1930s until 1985. Some famous people he photographed included the writer Brendan Behan and actors Margaret Rutherford and Gene Tierney. He also photographed Prince Monolulu, who was known for his unique clothes.
How He Worked
Arthur lived in Raheny, a suburb of Dublin. He would walk about seven miles to and from O'Connell Bridge every day for work.
His special way of working was clever:
- He would pretend to take a picture of someone walking by.
- When they stopped, he would take the real photo.
- Then, he would give them a ticket.
- People could use this ticket to pick up their photo from a nearby studio. His wife ran this studio and developed all the pictures.
His Lasting Impact
Arthur Fields' work is remembered through a special online project called Man On Bridge: 50 Years as a Photographer on O’Connell Bridge. This website lets people share their own photos from Arthur's collection. It has an archive of images and videos.
The Man on Bridge website won an award in 2015 for being the best website at the Digital Media Awards. It also won an Arthur Guinness Projects award. In December 2014, an exhibition showed 3,400 photos from the project at the Gallery of Photography in Dublin.
A documentary film called Man On Bridge was made for RTE, an Irish TV channel. It was shown at Christmas in 2014. The film was nominated for an IFTA award for Best Documentary in 2015.
Two books filled with Arthur Fields' photographs have also been published. They were edited by Ciaran Deeney and David Clarke.
