The Adrian K. Dixon Collection has been fully catalogued and is listed below.
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1. 1880–1900
One bound 19th century album containing black and white photographic prints, which are adhered to the album pages. The photographs, likely taken between 1880 and 1900 on the Aran Island Inis Mór, depict landscapes, religious ruins, archaeological sites, domestic structures and their inhabitants.
One image depicts the 'Arran Island Post Office' and was taken in Cill Rónáin, Árainn. The building directly to the right was known as Lios Aengus and today is a Bed & Breakfast, the Dormer House. The right half of the frame is occupied by a shop owned by Thomas Chard, a Protestant born c. 1827 in Co. Cork, who, by 1911 was still living in Cill Rónáin. He first came from Inishbofin to Aran in the late 1850s to take up a post as a schoolteacher. The age and dress of the man in the photograph suggests it could be a portrait of Thomas Chard himself outside his establishment.
Another photograph in the album shows what appears to be a schoolmaster teaching pupils out-of-doors. Combined with this photograph of Chard's it suggests that the visiting photographer interacted with the Protestant community on the island, during a time of sectarianism.
Other images depict groups of people posing for the camera, vast landscapes including stone walls and cliffs, the occasional lone figure in the landscape, stone huts, and graveyards.
48 photographs
