Southside photographer is honoured

A SOUTHSIDE born photography graduate from the University of South Wales (USW) has won a top industry honour.

Daragh Soden (26), Cabinteely, who has just completed a degree in Documentary Photography, scooped the Undergraduate Single Image award with a shot taken from a much wider project, ‘Young Dubliners’, in the British Journal of Photography’s (BJP) Breakthrough 2016.

Daragh’s Young Dubliners collection is a series of images through which he tries to convey something he experienced growing up, and also “something about the times [the subjects] are growing up in now – a time of recession and austerity”.

Despite Soden’s knowledge of the city, Young Dubliners features shots of people he doesn’t know, and his winning image was caught off-the-cuff on the bus.

“I had just finished a long day shooting Young Dubliners and was catching the bus home,” he recalls.

“When I got to the top of the stairs, I looked down the aisle and spotted this young couple chilling at the back. I sat a few seats ahead of them for a while, my nerves bubbling about in my belly.

“Eventually, I plucked up the courage to turn around to ask for a photograph. They were cool about it and just stared out the window as if I wasn’t there while I wobbled about trying to focus as the bus swung round corners. I didn’t see the photograph until a few months later, when I developed the film at university.

Of his college experience, he added: “It is one of the best courses to study photography in the world. The lecturers are not only wise mentors but are also leading practitioners.”

Bruno Bayley, European managing editor of Vice UK, said of the Daragh’s winning image: “It’s a very tender picture. There’s a lovely dynamic between the two people in the picture, and there’s a timelessness to it.”

Daragh’s work, along with the other winners in the awards, will be printed by London pro-lab theprintspace and exhibited at The Old Truman Brewery in east London as part of the Free Range graduate shows.