#mass paths

Caitriona Dunnett, Path to Bishop’s Cave (from the series ‘Mass Paths’)

Mass Paths, Caitriona Dunnett (tea-toned cyanotypes from digital negatives)

Mass Paths is a series of handcrafted photographs; landscapes of the Irish countryside embedded with absence. They portray the traces of paths walked by Catholics to reach illegal mass during penal times.

The Penal Laws were imposed on Catholics in Ireland in 1695 and religion was prohibited. The Church was kept alive by operating under great secrecy.

The locations of these sites were passed on by word of mouth. This local knowledge was handed down through generations. The oral tradition in Ireland disappeared gradually around the 1960s alongside land exchange and redevelopment.

Dunnett has spent years researching mass paths and other penal sites, piecing the information together, scouring through word searches on the Internet, finding little snippets posted by schools, regional newspapers and walking clubs. These fragments led to maps, hunting for locations hidden in the landscapes.

Caitriona Dunnett’s series ‘Mass Paths’ – landscapes of the Irish countryside in hunting for traces of people who walked the paths during penal times to reach illegal mass, in her attempt to investigate history and memory, and capture their stories of resilience, courage and commitment.

“The Penal Laws were imposed on Catholics in Ireland in 1695 and religion was prohibited. The Church was kept alive by operating under great secrecy. My aim is to visually unearth the history behind these paths and the people who walked them. The locations of these sites were passed on by word of mouth… I spent years researching…

Caitriona Dunnett, Path to Bishop’s Cave (from the series ‘Mass Paths’)