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Arthur Fields’ Man on the Bridge in the Gallery of Photography is the opening up of an archive which maps the evolution of Dublin’s street society from 1933 to 1988. Fields firmly cemented himself as an institution on O’Connell Bridge where he stood 365 days a year for over 50 years, candidly capturing the daily stride of the Dubliner. The installation spans four rooms and two floors, centred around an enormous billboard sized collection of 3400 photographs, with an accompanying selection of featured photographs and heart-warming morsels of insight into the lives of the subjects. A video documentary perhaps the best compliment to the installation, portraying Field’s as a tradesman rather than an artist, making the collection an all the more genuine a look at a pre-internet Humans of Dublin.

Through Fields’ photographic time machine, we witness social exteriors soften with the informalisation of dress. Who would have thought that in the 1930s, teenage girls were once sartorially indistinguishable from their mothers? As we watch the years rise, the same can be said of their hemlines. From 1966, photos of traditional Irish family units flower into the birth of Dublin youth culture, a social microcosm which spices up the streets. Musical influences of the times are interpreted through fashion: hippies, mods, skinheads and punks map the changes in attitudes towards the camera, as stiffness and “say cheese” is replaced by boisterous, full frontal engagement and street banter. Couples who dare to defy the church through pre-marital displays of public affection are getting younger. We can even pinpoint the beginning of the Irish women’s revolution in terms of office wear and trouser rebellion.

Fields successfully unravels the sociocultural history of the “photographic mile” as Westmoreland Street and O’Connell Bridge were previously dubbed. The exhibition gives a direct insight to the changing face of the social attitudes and norms of Dubliners.

Man on the Bridge runs until 8 January 2015 at the Gallery of Photography, Temple Bar. Photo by Stephen Moloney.