Merging beauty with the beast

During my college years in Limerick, I would often walk along the Dock Road, drawn toward the looming presence of the Irish Cement factory. This vast industrial complex was dominated by grey silos, conveyor belts and tall chimneys billowing steam. It felt like a humming monster rising out of the earth, clanking, restless and strangely alive. Never a soul in sight, it seemed to exist with a will of its own. Returning to the site recently, I found it abandoned and overtaken by weeds. Its cement edges have softened and its steel frames are streaked with rust. In stillness, it is more compelling than ever, softening, merging back into the landscape from which it once emerged.

Irish Cement operates another plant in County Meath, which I pass on the way to my sister’s home. This facility consists of a cluster of squat, cylindrical silos and a long processing hall set beside open fields. Its setting feels almost surreal, an industrial presence embedded within a quiet rural landscape. I’ve photographed the site many times, but I’m always drawn back to one particular view: a gateway framed by two stone pillars. Beyond the entrance, arching trees frame a winding road that leads to the distant factory. From here, the plant’s silhouette blends with the landscape, taking on a less industrial, more mythical feel. It resembles a fairytale castle or a futuristic Emerald City, rising improbably at the road’s end.

In this body of work, silent era film stars are layered over the stark landscape of a cement factory, creating a series of fictitious, dreamlike illusions. Their faces once projected in flickering black-and-white reappear here as hovering presences, suspended between memory and place.

These figures do not belong to the physical world they occupy. Instead, they exist in a parallel reality, where time collapses and histories overlap. The industrial setting, with its weight and permanence, contrasts with the ephemeral nature of early cinema, where identity was built from light, shadow, and gesture.

Framing this encounter is the natural arch of trees, which encloses the scene like a hidden enclave. The result is a visual meditation on presence and absence, where the ghosts of early film culture linger over a transformed landscape, inviting the viewer to step into a world that feels at once distant and strangely familiar.