Exposure 99

An exhibition of pictures taken last year by photographers from The Irish Times was opened in Dublin last night. "Exposure99, The Exhibition", in association with Fujifilm, will continue at the National Photographic Archive on Temple Bar's Meeting House Square until February 5th.

Photographs from the exhibition, "The Last Year of the Millennium As Seen Through The Eyes of Irish Times Photographers", will be published in a special 100-page magazine free with The Irish Times tomorrow.

Among the large attendance at last night's opening were the chairman of The Irish Times Ltd, Mr Don Reid, the editor, Mr Conor Brady, the company managing director, Mr Nick Chapman, the newspaper's pictures editor, Mr Dermot O'Shea, and Mr Gerry O'Brien, general manager, Fuji Photo Film (Ireland).

Introducing the theatre and opera director, Dr Jonathan Miller, who formally opened the exhibition, Mr Brady described it as "an absolutely super presentation". It was, he said, "a very special job for a very special time. We are all very proud."

Dr Miller, who is in Dublin to direct Shakespeare's As You Like It at the Gate theatre, said that "one of the impressive things about this extraordinary exhibition here is that we are now capable of capturing things which previously flew away without any record at all."

He spoke of the "curious authority" of the image, so that even a blurred photograph of Henry VIII would carry greater weight than a beautiful portrait by Holbein. There was about photography "a sense of looking at the thing itself," of contact with the object, as of the image being caused directly by the object itself, he said.

He wondered what our history would now be were it then possible for an event like 1798, for instance, to be recorded in all its "meticulous and atrocious detail", as was available today through photography. It was a privilege to open the exhibition of pictures by "these often heroic Irish Times photographers," he said.

Mr O'Shea said it was hoped to take the exhibition around the State when it closed in Dublin.