Watching The Gulf War

The date is approximate but it's about a week after it began. I remember because at that time myself and my girlfriend, D (above) were in the Hibernia lounge bar in Bray. We were on the point of breaking up, amicably enough, when a commotion in the far corner, near the wall-mounted TV, drew our attention. People had gathered to watch the reports of the first bombing raid, much of the footage, as I recall, in grainy night-vision which gave it a nostalgic, World War Two feel. So, not to be glib, but the breaking out of the war momentarily delayed our breakup (for a few weeks). It was a strange time, a pervasive sense of dislocation, knowing that monstrous things were happening in some far corner of the globe, feeling the ripples impact, ridiculously mildly, on my dreamy existence. As Kavanagh put it, regarding The Emergency:

It is summer and the eerie beat
of madness in Europe trembles the
Wings of the butterflies along the canal.


Incidentally, the original photo wasn't taken with a Canon 5D (which would have been impossible unless we were time travelers), but with my girlfriend's camera, a Contax I think. The image is a photograph of a photograph, the one print I made. I should have asked her for the neg but never got around to it. A pity, because it's one of the strongest portraits I took, then or now.