Bonnettstown: A House in Ireland

Bonnettstown: A House in Ireland by Andrew Bush. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780810907485.

A perfect early-eighteenth-century Georgian limestone manor house situated in the wild, overgrown patchwork countryside near Kilkenny, Ireland, captivated photographer Andrew Bush and inspired him to create this book. Many times over the period 1979-1982 he visited the 1737 Anglo-Irish manor Bonnettstown Hall and the four elderly aristocrats who inhabited it. This stunning volume displays forty-five color photographs that are part of the intimate visual record he made while there: the interior and exterior of an estate whose inhabitants were members of a family that had lived there for over two centuries. The large format of the book, along with the superb reproduction of the photographs, enables the viewer to study the myriad telling details of each picture. The exterior views show us the perfectly symmetrical limestone structure and the surrounding landscape. But mostly this is about what lies beyond its front door: we are invited into the public and private spaces of this historic house. Turning the pages we pass through the halls, doorways, and rooms. We may see a room photographed from more than one viewpoint or at different times of year. We recognize certain features. The photographs are also interrelated through sentiment: we can sense how the environment of Bonnettstown has been shaped by the people there through the seasons and the centuries. All the pictures are illumined by a common source -- the light unique to the Irish countryside. Bush’s preface gives us some of the history of the house and its family. Mark Haworth-Booth, Curator of Photographs at the Victoria & Albert Museum, provides a foreword that places Andrew Bushs work in the context of the photography of Atget and Hockney and the verse of Yeats and Murphy. This volume will be treasured both for its fine photography and for its sensitive portrayal of a historic house, and it will appeal to all those intrigued by things Irish. Bonnettstown gives us a home to live in and dream of.