Veteran photographer Tom Lawlor talks to Joe Duffy about photographing the aftermath of the Dublin bombings 50 years ago. Listen back above.
On May 17th 1974 photographer Tom Lawlor was in the Irish Times D’Olier Street office, chatting to his picture editor Gordon Standing. Business was winding up for the day when they heard an explosion coming from the direction of Parnell Street. Recognising the sound of a bomb, Tom grabbed his equipment and ran into the street, heading in the direction of the blast. Speaking to Joe Duffy on Liveline, he recalls running across O’Connell bridge and ducking into Abbey Street to avoid the crowds streaming down O’Connell Street, away from the site of the explosion. As he ran, he heard a second bomb go off; this time just a short distance away. Seconds later, he walked straight into a scene of appalling destruction and mayhem in Talbot Street. Without missing a beat, he set to work.
Many of the images Tom Lawlor captured that day will never be published. He says the Irish Times' editor Douglas Gageby personally vetted each one - and rejected most of them. The photographs and the negatives now form part of the archive of the greatest loss of life in any one day during the Troubles, as does the personal testimony of the man who took them.
In his conversation with Joe Duffy, Tom Lawlor's reverence for the loss of life is equalled by his professional determination to get the job done, come what may. Tom recounts his first impressions of what faced him in Talbot Street:
"What I saw was staggering. It was just a street full of bodies with the souls leaving them. It was very difficult work to do, but I had to just take the pictures – I had to document it. That was my job."
Tom's vivid descriptions recreate the devastating scenes. One young girl features particularly strongly in his memory:
"Her hair was moving and her garment was moving around her waist– she seemed to be resting. But her blood was just filling the seams of the pavement that framed her shape. And I was thinking to myself, this could be my sister, or it could be my mother because my mother worked in Talbot Street, but she wasn’t in work that evening because of the bus strikes."
Bus strikes in Dublin that day meant that a greater than usual number of people were looking to catch trains home that evening. Three bombs went off; one each on Parnell Street, Talbot Street and South Leinster Street - all potential walking routes for workers heading for Connolly, Tara and Pearse Street stations. The city was brought to a stop, Tom says:
"The city was in such a state of shock. The silence was unbelievable."
Tom headed up to Parnell Street to capture the scenes there. He says that on returning to the Irish Times offices later that evening, the toughest and most experienced of his newsroom colleagues were reeling from what had happened. His editor Douglas Gageby took a more than usually hands-on approach in deciding which images could be published:
"He was checking each print as it came out from the darkroom and he was saying, 'We can’t use this, we can’t use this.’ There was very little that could be used, because what purpose would it serve? You know, the pain, the mayhem, the death – it was quite incredible."
As one of the first reporters on the scene, Tom knew he was capturing images of people who had died before their families knew they were gone. This feeling has stayed with him, he tells Joe:
"It crossed my mind when I was looking at this girl on the pavement. She struck me so much that I’m looking at her, and I know she’s dead. But there’s people at home waiting for her - they don’t know she’s gone. They don’t know they’ve lost anybody."
Tom never discovered the identity of the girl he saw on the pavement. His friend Don Mullan, author of a book on the Dublin-Monaghan bombings offered to tell him who she was, but Tom declined. He says he honours her memory every time he walks down Talbot Street, and he prefers that she remains anonymous to him, as he explains to Joe:
"I said, 'Don, don’t give me her name. I don’t want to know her name.' As far as I was concerned, she represented every woman; every woman was encapsulated in her as she lay there. I didn’t want to know her. I needed to keep it as abstract as possible so I could deal with it."
Tom Lawlor went on to document other tragic events in his career as a photojournalist, including the Stardust nightclub fire in 1981. Joe asks him what effect the work has had on him as a human being - and how does he cope with it? Tom agrees it can be difficult, but it’s all part of the job:
"There’s a lot of trauma that comes to you, but you’re able to shield yourself against it. And sometimes you can hide behind the camera, Joe. I know it’s only a metal box, but you hold it up to your eye, and it keeps you at a remove, and that helps you."
You can listen back to Barry Lenihan and Ciarán O’Connor’s podcast The Forgotten about the bombings and their aftermath here and on the RTÉ Radio app.
If you’ve been personally affected by anything in this interview, information on helplines is here.