Longford New Writing: The first multimedia submissions for 2026

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Selected Photography

By Michael Croghan

“In Jan 2021 the Irish state body Bord Na Mona ended its harvesting of peat, turning its focus into a climate solutions company. It was in production for over seventy five years with heavy machinery harvesting, powering the national grid, and also had one of the largest private rail systems in Europe.

“This unique peat landscape was created and formed after the last Ice Age, not only does it sequester carbon, it also stores it if left untouched. A human matter of urgency with environmental climate concerns.

“I have been continually documenting this space since with instinctive poetic photography. In 2026 I am working on completing a photo-book on the subject. I have had several photographs in various group exhibitions shown nationally and internationally, most recently with the Iova Photography Collective group exhibition The Four Elements with my photography art titled Bog Revival.”

- Feb 5 - 14, 2026: Bog Revival selected for Iova Photography Collective The Four Elements group show, Hume Street, Dublin.

-June 5 - 30, 2024: Glasgow Gallery of Photography, Scotland, International Photography Exhibition 2024, work selected from ongoing bog series for group show

The photographs in Ceremony translate an interconnected space, with the ephemeral manifestations of youth, bringing remembrance of a threshold crossed without a ceremony. The realism of the images have an unassuming layer of sensitivity that can translate to that threshold from an innocence to a knowing innocence and maturity.

Freedom is ever present and you get a sense of fervent change happening in the temporal structures. These spaces and remnants I find transcend to memories of innocence and exploration of body, mind and spirit. These photographs aim to show how the punctum can inspire personal experiences with unrelated spaces.

Ceremony (2023) is available through Photo Museum Ireland or directly from the artist. Was selected for 2023 Dec 7 - 17 Dublin Art Book Fair DABF23 Polyphonic. An installation was selected and shown locally (Longford Town) 2023 July 21 - 23 for the Cruthu Arts Festival.

Biography:

Michael Croghan is a documentary photographer who photographs in-between spaces, in a poetic realist and formalist style adaptive to the everyday vernacular. He collaborates with communities of interest to explore social tropes and hidden histories, a transcendence of the familiar to draw attention to the poetry of the common place, Michael is an obsessive daily image maker, working on multiple works at any given time, and revisiting the same places because of the temporal nature of things.