On the Town: Boys will be boys, whether it is 1892 or 2005. The barefoot boys who were photographed in 1892 in Connemara have much in common with the Portuguese boys playing football in the rain who were photographed in 1992. Both groups look happy and innocent.
Two separate photographic exhibitions opened side by side in Temple Bar this week, both of them in venues in Meeting House Square.
Planet Football, at the Gallery of Photography, is "designed to illustrate the international appeal of football", said John O'Donoghue TD, Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, who visited both shows.
"The game cuts across all geographic and social divides," he added. "It stirs passions that cannot be contained by cultural or national boundaries".
The football photographs are from the world-renowned agency, Magnum.
Regeneration: The West of Ireland 1892-1914 focuses on the poverty of the people in Ireland at the turn of the last century.
"It is a stark reminder of how much material progress we have made in the 20th century," said Prof Cormac Ó Gráda, of UCD, when he opened this show at the National Photographic Archive.
"The children look healthy, despite the poverty, many of the boys wearing the gúnaí which were still the norm in south Connemara and Aran at this time," added Ó Gráda, talking about the schoolchildren in the show's earlier black-and-white photographs.
The best image in the archive's exhibition, according to Robert Conway, a design student at DIT, was one of a nurse talking to an old woman in 1910.
"It shows the complete difference in class at the time," he said.
Aonghus Ó hAonghusa, director of the National Library, loved the photograph of the schoolboys in Connemara in their gúnaí.
"Contrary to what we might think, they look well-fed and well-dressed and there's a bit of a smile on their faces," he said.
Regeneration: The West of Ireland 1892-1914 is at the National Photographic Archive until Mon, Oct 10; Planet Football is at the Gallery of Photography until Sun, July 24. Admission to both exhibitions is free