Abstract

For about three centuries in many different countries, a scrapbook or album became the most immediate manner of diary making. In Ireland, this often took on a particular and idiosyncratic form. From the late 1960s until the early 1990s, the turmoil of Northern Ireland was often reflected in these hand-constructed books. Clippings from newspapers, family photos and personal mementos often found their way into highly individual collaged records of daily life. Donovan Wylie has recreated a nonsectarian version with the benefit of hindsight. Scrapbook gives nothing but the authors personal view of an era and a kind of record making. It is a communication between two opposing forces from a fictitious witness, and examines the extents to which an "archive" can function as an historical record.