10/10/2026
There are places where time seems to move a little differently. Not because the clocks stop working, but because, for a moment, the present feels connected to something much older.
Smithfield is one of those places.
Twice a year, on the first Sunday of March and the first Sunday of September, Smithfield Horse Fair brings horses and people together on Smithfield Square. The sound of hooves mixes with voices and conversations. Someone holds the reins, someone adjusts a bridle, while children watch the horses with curiosity.
For a few hours, the square takes on a different character. Amid the changing streets of Dublin, a tradition continues to find its place.
Smithfield has a long history of horse trading. The fair once took place more frequently, but today it survives as an event held just twice a year. And this is what draws me there with my camera. Not only the horses, but the people around them: families who have known this tradition for generations, children discovering the animals for themselves, worn leather, muddy boots and quiet moments of understanding between a horse and its owner.
A horse fair is more than a place where horses are bought and sold. It is a glimpse into a way of life, one that cannot be fully understood through photographs or stories alone, yet leaves traces in both.
Perhaps that is why horses have such a strong place in Irish folklore.
In the ancient legend of Oisín, Niamh Chinn Óir arrives on a white horse and takes him to Tír na nÓg, the Land of Eternal Youth. There, time passes differently. When Oisín eventually returns to Ireland, centuries have gone by, and the world he once knew has disappeared.
The horse carries him between two worlds, connecting the familiar with the unknown.
This idea has always fascinated me: the possibility that an ordinary journey might lead somewhere beyond what we understand.
It is a feeling I recognise in Into the West, the Irish film set in Dublin. Two young boys from a Traveller family encounter a beautiful white horse, whom their grandfather names Tír na nÓg. The name brings the old legend into their modern lives, and when the boys set off on a journey west, their adventure begins to echo Oisín's story.
The film blends the everyday world with something almost mythical. Its horse is not simply an animal, but a symbol of freedom, escape and the bond between people and the world they belong to.
Perhaps this is why the story feels so close to the spirit of Smithfield Horse Fair. The settings are different, but both hold a connection between horses, people and a tradition that continues to shape lives.
When I look at the horses in Smithfield, I find myself noticing the small things: a hand resting on a neck, a child watching in wonder, a horse turning towards the person holding its reins. These are the moments I want to photograph.
Not to create an image of an old Ireland frozen in time, but to show something that is still alive.
Traditions are never quite the same from one generation to the next. They change with the people who carry them, and sometimes they survive in unexpected ways. In Smithfield, the fair has changed, too. Yet for a few hours each year, horses return to the square, bringing with them a world that might otherwise remain hidden beneath the surface of modern life.
Then the fair ends. The horses leave, the conversations fade, and the square returns to its usual rhythm.
What remains are the photographs, the memories of those who were there, and the stories people continue to tell.
For me, photography is a way of paying attention to these fleeting encounters. I cannot preserve a tradition simply by photographing it, but I can record a fragment of its life before it changes again.
And perhaps this brings me back to Tír na nÓg.
Maybe the Land of Eternal Youth is not only a distant place from an ancient legend. Maybe it represents the longing to find somewhere beyond the ordinary, somewhere we can escape the familiar and see the world differently.
Or perhaps it exists for a moment in something much simpler: a horse standing on the square, the light falling across its mane, a child holding the reins.
For a brief moment, the old stories and the present seem to meet.
In Ireland, they still have horses to carry them forward. More on https://www.facebook.com/share/1dU71TDcPx/?mibextid=wwXIfr.
