There are several different exhibitions in the museum but I will limit this review to examining the newest installment:  Kerry Lives 1950-1973: A Portrait of the County from the Kennelly Archives. The exhibition showcases the photography of Pádraig Kennelly (d May 2011) and his wife Joan (d 2007) who between 1952 and 1973 took almost 600,000 pictures detailing Kerry life. The photos in the exhibition are taken from the Kennelly Archive which was recently digitalized and made available online. In 1974 the couple founded Kerry’s Eye newspaper which today is an institution in the county. The main aim of the exhibition is to document a society which was undergoing a transition. The fifties in Ireland is usually imagined as a dank period both economically and politically: it was situated between the high drama of the early years of the state and the economic growth of the 1960s.  The exhibition acknowledges the harsh economic reality of the time but it tries to show the great social change that also took place during this period. The first piece of the exhibition highlights the theme of change:  it is a piece showing the change in the Irish rural economy between the fifties and the seventies.  During this time the Irish rural economy became less diverse, the amount of dairy cattle and sheep rose while numbers of other animals fell sharply. The amount of farms also fell as smaller farms became uneconomical. The amount of labourers also fell as mechanisation reduced demand for manpower. The exhibition explores the successful campaign by the Irish Country Women’s Association to have indoor piped water installed in homes . The ICA campaigned on this issue because it was traditionally the woman’s role to fetch water and portable water would help ease rural women’s workload. Also on the subject of women’s lives of the fifties the exhibition details how women’s participation in the workforce increased by fifty percent during this period and the number of women in county towns outnumbered the number of men due to inward migration from the country.

                Emigration is a central theme of the exhibition many of the photos are from the Yank’s Balls, which were dances held to entertain emigrants who were visiting home for their holidays. Between 1951 and 1971 Kerry lost 22% of the population to emigration. Personally the most touching photo was that of father and his six sons. The caption below explains that all but one had emigrated either to the UK or the USA due to the lack of opportunity at home. The exhibition’s contains a quote by the Bryan MacMahon, a well known author and teacher,  who in a meeting with the Minister of Education,Richard Mulchay,  declared ‘The inheritors of your revolution, Minister, have been rewarded with squalor’. This denunciation crystallizes fully the economic stagnation and dismay which characterised the period.

The exhibition also shows  pictures of the various industries in Tralee most of whom were set up in the sixties when the government of Seán Lemass adopted a policy of encouraging foreign investment and opening up the Irish economy. Such pictures include that of the Liebherr crane plant in Killarney.

                The exhibition also details school life in Kerry during this period. Many of the photos show the dilapidated nature of many of the schools as well as the poverty of many of its students. A series of photos show pictures from the Tralee’s industrial school. In other to put forward a positive image the pictures showed various happy children, it was only decades later the abuse and torture perpetrated in these schools came to light. The disconnect between the positive façade in the photo and what the dqark life which these children led causes the photos to elicit a melancholy response. Staying on the subject of education the exhibition details how the introduction of free secondary education allowed many children to attend and finish secondary school.

                 The Kennelly exhibition is a hugely enjoyable experience especially for those with an interest in twentieth century Irish history. The exhibition reminded me of a module I took during my undergraduate degree. This module was on the economic history of the independent Irish state and the similarity between this exhibition and that course caused me to reflect on how photos can help a student of history gain a greater understanding of the period he/she is examining. The exhibition also confirmed my impression that history books should include much more photos in order to give the reader a better understanding of the time in question. As tablets slowly make physical books obsolete surely publishers could take advantage of the new medium and provide more photos as  cost of ink and special paper would not be present? Indeed history books in the future could include film reels or video recordings from the time. To sum up the Kennelly exhibition is a thought provoking and engaging exhibition which I highly recommend.