Dublin in the early 1990s…

Back in the early 90s, Ireland wasn’t a very prosperous place. For lunch you could get a bowl of chunky vegetable soup for £1, or £1.20 with a thick slice of buttered bread if you were feeling flush. The options for coffee were limited to stewed filter or watery instant. I spent a lot of time walking around Dublin looking at derelict buildings and stepping around plastic bags blowing down the street.

In October of 1991 I came across an exhibition ‘Temple Bar Framework Plan’ about plans to redevelop part of the city centre. When I asked around, nobody knew where Temple Bar was. I thought it looked interesting so I went to the people who organised it and started documenting people, sites, and buildings for Temple Bar Properties. For the next few years I got to go inside those derelict buildings, I met the artists working in freezing buildings with dodgy stairs, and watched life (and money) come back to the centre of Dublin.

Still, nobody was talking about a ‘boom.’ That would come later.