Abstract
Chapter 1 explores the practices and semiotics of photograph albums. Across the twentieth century, making photograph albums moved from an elite to a popular form, and was especially popular among single young people. Familial and personal histories were curated through selecting photographs, arranging them on the page, and fixing their meaning through captioning. In order to unpack these themes in detail, the chapter focuses on photograph albums depicting three ‘ordinary’ Irish lives. These photograph collections can provide us with a host of information about Ireland in the early years of the twentieth century: about how people used a visual language to narrate their lives; received, assimilated, or resisted social and political discourses; and revealed or concealed family secrets. Each of the subjects made particular choices about the stories they told in their albums, drawing on photographic modes drawn from Kodak convention and the visual rhetoric of Ireland.
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