Signs of the Time # 16

In the ’60s a philosophical political group, The Situationists, argued the subliminal messages designed to foster our consumerist desires, could be used and directed towards usurping that same commercial protocol and the political establishment it fostered and represented. Everything you see around you, every day, informs the reality you live in. What information you chose to register informs the way you see the world. So, on a stroll into Dublin city centre I took some photos of things that grabbed my attention.

We like to think of Ireland as a progressive country these days, stepping away from the images and styles that might have informed our past. But in this billboard you can see we hold on to our traditions, too.

The Why Go Bald? sign outside the Universal Scalp Studio building is known the world over. At night, the man’s neon hair lights up, bald, not bald and so on.

Ignored while he lived in Dublin, James Joyce spent much of his latter years away from the country, living in France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland, but his heart remained at home, in his writings. Nowadays, you’ll find a celebration of Joyce somewhere, if you look.

Right across the street from the Stag’s Head pub, a fine old Victorian building with wooden and ceramic panelling, wood floor and a marble bar top, there’s a barber shop that was used as a shopfront for a HBO period drama series, Penny Dreadful. The owners decided not to change the film artwork which makes entertaining reading as you pass by.