Meantime
David Stephenson

Photography’s uniqueness is its power to extract in a fraction of a second, the present, the past and the inevitability of the future.[i]

Butler Gallery is pleased to present Meantime, a mixed media exhibition combining photography and film by David Stephenson with a selection of poetry by Mark Granier. 

The central theme of Meantime is transience—the spirit of passing and life’s marginality. As Seamus Heaney put it in his 1996 poem, Postscript, ‘You are neither here nor there, A hurry through which known and strange things pass...’.[ii]

Stephenson’s portraits of people embody a kind of stillness and private reverie. His fascination with the contradictory aspects of existence, its ephemerality and its solidity, is also evidenced in his inclusion of damaged or archive photographs saved from old photo albums. 

Stephenson has always been drawn to the idea of a house as a soundbox, a witness to the lives that were shaped by that particular arrangement of walls and surfaces: the faces that peered through those windows, and what they looked out on. Houses generally outlast us. Compared to a house and its furnishings, we are ephemeral, speeded-up films, shadows in mirrors. 

Interspersed throughout the exhibition are prints of Mark Granier’s poems. These do not interpret or comment on the film or photographs, but compliment them tonally, encounters that are in the same orbit. Like Stephenson, Granier has always been drawn to resonant images that possess the ability to haunt and linger.     

Meantime, the film, combines elements of Stephenson’s still photography with the moving image, merging city and country life. It wraps us in images of solitary figures, hands washing, scrolling or gently swaying in rippling water to the constant movement of nature. Granier’s poems, and Derek Mahon’s poem Dog Days, are beautifully read by the celebrated Irish actor Stephen Rea, who connects innately to the material and whose singular mellifluous cadence adds another layer of poignancy to the material. The engaging sound design, by Stephenson and Michael Higgins, creates a sense of place in city and country by introducing a myriad of sounds—from the strident ring of a fire truck and Garda siren, to the howling of wind and beating rain, to the haunting tinkle of a windup toy piano.

This exhibition Meantime evolves as a series of visual thoughts and memories. Some images will stand alone, while others will appear in groups, with the narrative connections at times linked by the barest of threads.

About the Artist & Poet:

David Stephenson is a fine art photographer and filmmaker from Dublin living in Bray, Co Wicklow. His work has been exhibited at The Hunt Museum, Limerick; RHA Gallery, twice as invited artist; Municipal Gallery, DLR Lexicon; National Portrait Gallery, London; Angela Flowers Gallery, London; a group exhibition of works from Local Authorities’ collections (30 Years, Artists, Places); and a solo show Slant at Photo Museum Ireland.

He was the winner of the National Gallery Zurich Portrait Prize, the Ballinglen Museum’s first biennial open exhibition photography prize as well as the Royal Ulster Academy open exhibition photography prize, all in 2023. In 2025, his commission of a portrait of the actor Stephen Rea was launched at the National Gallery of Ireland for their portrait collection. In 2025, Stephenson exhibited a selection of his photographic/film work at the Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith London. Stephenson’s multi award-winning short film Raymond is an elegiac portrait of an elderly man’s recollections of life on the Irish border in County Cavan. One of his current works-in-progress, Main Street Bray, is a film/ photographic project based in his hometown of Bray, Co Wicklow. His photographs are in private and public collections including Butler Gallery. Recently National Gallery of Ireland purchased four of his works for their Permanent Collection.

Mark Granier is a Wicklow-based poet and photographer. His film-poem, Docklands, was awarded joint first prize in Doolin Writers Weekend and his work has been exhibited in The RHA. Other awards include The Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize and two Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowships. His sixth collection of poetry, Everything You Always Wanted To Know, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2025.  

[i] Walter Benjamin, from influential 1931 essay ‘A Short History of Photography’ (Kleine Geschichte der Photographie)
[ii] ‘Postcript’ from the collection ‘The Spirit Level’, 1996. Copyright © 2019 by Seamus Heaney; Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Artist Talk

Join David Stephenson for an artist's talk in Butler Gallery on Thursday 25th June from 6.00pm to 7.00pm. David will give an insight into his practice and work in the exhibition. This is a free, ticketed event with limited places available to book here.