Ruth Medjber should be coming to the end of what she planned to be a “jam-packed” year – from having an exhibition in Australia to touring the states and working at Glastonbury. Yet, due to Covid-19, these plans changed. However, she became restless and started noticing the bills rolling in and decided to take action in the early days of the lockdown. And that’s when she had her lightbulb moment to start her photo project Lockdown Portraits in the Window which earned her international recognition.

Her new venture is an obvious labour of love which requires her to work essentially ever evening in any weather. Nonetheless, her efforts have already been rewarded as Medjber landed a book deal for her project which has inspired her to shoot these portraits all around Ireland.

Medjber talks about her new project, how she and her brother would always get cameras as stocking fillers growing up, why she decided to call her business Ruthless Images due to fears over racism and sexism and why she’s always thinking “in Instagram.”

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Alison Cowzer (AC): Hello and welcome to the podcast. Today my guest is Ruth Medjber. Ruth is a photographer. She’s worked as a tour photographer for many of the world’s biggest rock acts. She’s also a portrait photographer, but you may know her for her most recent work, The Lockdown Portraits in the Window series, which was shot all over Ireland and portrays hundreds of people in their front rooms through the window and charts the progress of how they’re coping with the lockdown.

Ruth, you’re very welcome.

Ruth Medjber (RM): Thank you so much for having me.

AC: I’ve given a bit of a flavour of your background.

I what to start really by going back to March of this year. You as a rock photographer, touring the world with some of the biggest acts that are out there, an incredibly exciting on-the-move career. And then we got to March. And what happened?

RM: We got to March and everything fell apart very, very quickly. So, the music industry was almost one of the first to be affected by Covid, because, of course, we gather in large crowds and that’s how we earn a living by putting on big shows everywhere. So, it was the first business to go. I was looking forward to a year and a summer full of events, so I would have been shooting Glastonbury Festival and touring all across Europe. I was due to have an exhibition of my work in Australia and then I was going to hop on a tour to America.

“I’m used to working seven days a week. That’s what we do on the road. I’m used to working every single night. And so, when I suddenly was faced with nothing to do, it didn’t take me long before I was going a bit stir crazy and tried to hustle and get something to do.”

Ruth Medjber

So, it was all mapped out kind of as far as October, November, really. Jam-packed. But within about two weeks, it was all cancelled and we all thought that it would be postponed and everything will be postponed but, as we know, that’s not the case.

Everything, not to sound too drastic about it or too morbid about it, but everything that I had built in my career was geared towards me being a professional music photographer. And there really isn’t that job doesn’t really exist in Ireland. Bands in Ireland they can’t really afford a photographer, a music photographer, most of the time. You have to be playing arenas or stadiums to have that budget.

So, I worked hard since about the age of 16, being a music photographer and a press photographer to get where I am. And then I just felt it was very cruel that it was all put on pause so quickly. But that’s just the way it went.

AC: So, you’re there in March. Lockdown is announced. Your reason to be is to be on the road, to be with hundreds of thousands of people on a night portraying the work and producing those wonderful images that we’ve seen from tours from Hozier, Arcade Fire, the works.

As a business, as a professional. you’re obviously looking at the mortgage, the rent, everything that needs to be paid. You moved pretty quickly to create something that will generate some revenue.

RM: Yeah. I’m used to working seven days a week. That’s what we do on the road. I’m used to working every single night. And so, when I suddenly was faced with nothing to do, it didn’t take me long before I was going a bit stir crazy and tried to hustle and get something to do. But yeah, mortgage still had to be paid, everything still had to be paid.

“I was doing it because I needed to take photographs for personal reasons, for my mental health. I need to have a camera in my hand. I need to have a purpose to get out of bed and to do a job, even though I’m not getting paid for it. I just need to be working.”

Ruth Medjber

This was early days. This was before the government announced that there would be support for people. I was kind of straight down to the dole office before the dole even knew what they were doing. So, there was no Covid payments in place. There was nothing. I was really panicking at this stage. At a very early stage. And I went down to the dole office to collect information to give to other freelancers who I knew would be in the exact same boat that I am because, unfortunately, our industry is freelancers. It’s a lot of self-employed people. It’s lot of people who don’t have the supports that people in other forms of employment would have.

AC: It’s the ultimate gig economy.

RM: It’s total gig economy in every way that you look at it. So, I was in a panic mode. Almost like a fight or flight kind of situation. My back was up and I needed to hustle. I needed to do something. So, I started testing the water.

I had my camera. That’s one thing I can do. I have a portrait studio, but I couldn’t get into it because obviously nobody knew what was going on. You couldn’t be with other people. So, I started looking to my followers, my Instagram followers, my Twitter followers. And I said, ‘what is it you guys want me to do? Maybe I’ll try do something like take a picture a day to ease my boredom. Give me an idea of what you want me to photograph.’

So, I had people sending me a word a day. A random word a day. And I was going to go out and I was going to take that photograph of a representation of that word while I was walking the dog. I was doing that for multiple reasons. I was doing it because I needed to take photographs for personal reasons, for my mental health. I need to have a camera in my hand. I need to have a purpose to get out of bed and to do a job, even though I’m not getting paid for it. I just need to be working.

AC: So, it’s not just about the revenue?

RM: No, not at all. But then also I needed to have a connection with the followers that I have built up over the years. I didn’t want to just go really quiet all of a sudden and have no online presence because people do forget about you. Let’s just call a spade a spade. They will forget about you. This is my business. I am my business.

“Initially it was at Christmas because I loved the Christmas lights that are on and I used to think wouldn’t it be great if I put a little note through people’s door saying, come to your window at 6pm and let me take your photograph.”

Ruth Medjber

AC: You’re defined as a photographer. And you have to photograph.

RM: My identity is wrapped up in my branding. Ruthless Imagery is me. I have to be producing content and I do feel that pressure. So, it was twofold why I was out there taking photographs.

So, I started to produce this series. Then also I had an idea to work with a friend of mine who is an illustrator. She’s brilliant. In fact, I’m really lucky to have her. She’s an artist. She’s single. She’s my age. We take these long walks every day where we talk about how similar our lives are. She’s also mixed race. Her dad was an immigrant. The two of us are facing challenges of being a woman in our fields. So, I was like, I want to work with this woman. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I want to work with her.

So, we decided to do a range of T-shirts and tote bags and I was like, maybe I’ll make some money. So, we came up with a slogan that would appeal to people in the current state of the world, which was ‘Mind Yourself’.

“Every single person in the world is at home right now. I thought, well, now’s the time to do this bloody project.”

Ruth Medjber

So, we put out this range of things and they took off and they sold really well and people loved it. And my followers grew again, which was fantastic. But it’s not going to last. It’s not going to make me money. It’s not going to pay the mortgage. So, I was still trying to think of things to do. I launched a print store because now I had the time to go back through my 16 years of archive of music photography and put it all online. That only took a couple of days and I was back to having nothing to do.

So, I remembered an idea I had maybe 10 years previous of how lovely it would be to photograph people in their windows. Now, initially it was at Christmas because I loved the Christmas lights that are on and I used to think wouldn’t it be great if I put a little note through people’s door saying, come to your window at 6pm and let me take your photograph. I had no reason behind it other than it looked pretty.

But I remembered this idea when I was sitting in my own home and I saw people flicking on their lights and I was like, ‘God, look at everybody.’ Every single person in the world is at home right now. I thought, well, now’s the time to do this bloody project. So, on March 23, I went out to a friend of mine. This was before the took the two-kilometre restrictions were in. So, I went out to Donabate they were already self-isolating, already kind of terrified of what was going on. I said, ‘can you come to the window, keep the baby up past her bedtime and let me take a photograph of you guys.’

And she was like, okay. She’s so easygoing that she puts up with my mad ideas all the time. And I took this photograph and I thought, this is lovely. This is something I can deal with. But I thought to myself, it’s also something that other photographers can replicate quite easily. So, I don’t want to put it out on social media too soon.

AC: You wanted to protect it.

RM: I wanted to protect it, and I wanted to have a good body of images to put out so that I would become known as the ‘window photographer.’ I’d have enough content that people be like, oh, she’s owning that idea, this is hers. So, I waited until I had 16 of them so I could form a perfectly formed square of images because I’m always thinking in Instagram, which is ridiculous.

“For the next three and a half months, every single night, regardless if it was lashing rain, I travelled around Ireland and I took pictures of people in their homes at twilight.”

Ruth Medjber

But when I had the sixteen, I put them out on Instagram and Twitter and the Irish Times saw it. The next day they ran it as a front cover. Within a few days, CNN ran it on their home page.

AC: So, this went international.

RM: This went international. People loved it. The response was absolutely overwhelming. I woke up to 400 emails in my inbox from people in my area looking to take part in the project.

AC: They wanted to be the next window.

RM: They did so for the next three and a half months, every single night, regardless if it was lashing rain, I travelled around Ireland and I took pictures of people in their homes at twilight.

AC: We’re obviously not in a visual medium here, but anyone who has seen it, you’ve themed it very much with that dusk light with the blue framing each of the images. So, in a way, it’s a product now, it’s yours. There’s a lot of IP (intellectual property) there.

RM: Which is nice. It’s nice that people do see them and they instantly think that it’s my photograph, which is great because RTÉ ran them as the campaign to introduce their new winter programming. And I went and I photographed the presenters in their homes and when RTÉ pushed it out in the morning, they pushed it out at 6am or whatever, and I wasn’t awake yet at that time. But I woke up to a whole load of text messages and tags from people going. Have you seen this? Have they stole your work? Are we angry at RTÉ? I was like, ‘No, we’re not angry. It’s mine. It’s okay.’ But I love that people now associate me with these dusky twilight windows.

“I said, now is the time to take this out of Dublin. This is your reason for putting your life and soul into it. This is why you’re going to work every night. And that’s why I worked my arse off on this bloody project. It had to be done.”

Ruth Medjber

AC: You’ve created something and, I suppose, for anybody in the creative industry, the real challenge is how to monetise it. How to get some revenue out of it. How to make it sustainable.

RM: And you know what? And I’m very lucky to say this, but it came quite easily after CNN and The Irish Times. I had book offers and it made perfect sense for me for this to be a book. And it was quite early days that the book deal came.

AC: You had a book deal without having to hawk this around 100 publishers.

RM: Yeah, I didn’t have to say a word.

AC: They just came to you.

RM: Yeah, I had four publishers offering me deals. And I was like, oh, my God, I’m so lucky. And I know that that is bananas and it doesn’t happen. And I’m very grateful for it. So, I spent a little time researching the publishers and I made my decision to go with Penguin Random House, and they’ve been amazing.

But because the gravity of what this offer was for me, it’s going to be my first book, and I wanted it to be as best as I could make it. I said, now is the time to take this out of Dublin. This is your reason for putting your life and soul into it. This is why you’re going to work every night. And that’s why I worked my arse off on this bloody project. It had to be done.

AC: So, you knew, with the international interest, the book, the publishers being interested that it had stopped being a personal project and it essentially become a new business.

RM: A new business, for sure. Even when the book deal came and they said to me, ‘would you go outside of Dublin?’ And I thought, you know what, I probably should, to sell more books. It needs to be an Ireland thing and not a Dublin thing. So, I was always thinking this this is how I could salvage some of 2020 back because I had I’d written it off in my head, I think. I thought this is not going to look good on my records if I want to go for another mortgage or anything. I’ve written it off, but this was my little saving grace and I threw myself at it.

AC: You have a book coming out in November. You’ve also looked at how you can make it real in terms of the experience of an exhibition.

RM: Yeah. For me, the physical form of photography is the absolute divine king of everything. I love holding photographs. I love seeing them on walls. I will always see my projects in an exhibition in my head.

AC: Even before you shoot them.

“My dad used to sell camera equipment back in the 90s. We were broke. I’m sure he won’t mind me telling people. It was the 90s. I think a lot of people were broke because the 80s, 90s. So, instead of putting me into childcare, he put me into the back of the van surrounded by all this gear. And it became my life.”

Ruth Medjber

RM: Kind of even before I shoot them. That’s always the end goal. Like no matter what it is, if I’m taking someone’s portrait, I can almost see the frame around them before I even take the picture.

AC: That’s quite unusual in our digital world where most of our photographs are left on our phones.

RM: I know, and that really disappoints me. There’s nothing more heartbreaking than losing photographs on your phones. That’s not how I was raised. I was raised physical, I was raised on analogue, I was tactile. Every dodgy little apartment I’ve ever lived in in my life, I’ve always converted a room into a dark room.

AC: And you get that from your family?

RM: Yes. My dad used to sell camera equipment back in the 90s. We were broke. I’m sure he won’t mind me telling people. It was the 90s. I think a lot of people were broke because the 80s, 90s. So, instead of putting me into childcare, he put me into the back of the van surrounded by all this gear. And it became my life. And I was intrigued by the litmus paper. And I was intrigued by film sensitivity and blower brushes. What three-year-old plays with blower brushes.

AC: What is a blower brush?

RM: A blower brush is just this little old thing that’s like full of air and you squeeze it into the camera and it makes an amazing sound. It’s for cleaning cameras. But I was fascinated with them. And he used to give myself and my brother cameras as stocking fillers for every Christmas. And I still have it. I had a bright pink camera and it was a 35mm camera.

And you always knew when I had taken the photograph, I was about four years of age, four or five, because I had broken it so much that it left a pink vignette around the side and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

AC: This was the filter before filters.

“I started my degree in 2004, so I was ready to kind of enter the workplace by like 2006/2007. And I found at that time in Ireland, I’ll just say it, it was a little bit racist. People didn’t respond well to foreign sounding surnames. So, I chose Ruthless Imagery to hide my heritage and to hide that side of everything.”

Ruth Medjber

RM: Yeah, absolutely. I was way ahead of the game. But yeah, it’s Dad’s fault, this whole thing is Dad’s fault.

AC: So, watching your dad sell camera equipment with his own small business, is that where you get your entrepreneurial streak of getting out there and making something of nothing.

RM: Looking at my parents, I definitely picked it up from them because they’re both just so hardworking and honest people that I don’t think I’ve ever seen my parents take a sick day growing up. And they’re still working now.

Going through the recession in the 80s and 90s, I was very aware of how much things cost and what I should and shouldn’t be asking for at those times. Like my Mam used to put me on her bicycle on the handlebars, there was a cushion strapped to it, and bring me to her job when she was, like, doing cleaning. I’d see them working really hard. And my Dad as well, who’s an Arab, has great sensibility when it comes to, like bartering and bargaining. I think I definitely get it from him when I enter negotiations. But yeah, I definitely owe it all to them. They’re just so hardworking that maybe that’s where I picked it up.

AC: When you set up your business, you’re your first photography business, yourself with your camera. You didn’t call it Ruth Medjber photography. You called it Ruthless Imagery. Why was that?

RM: I started my degree in 2004, so I was ready to kind of enter the workplace by like 2006/2007. And I found at that time in Ireland, I’ll just say it, it was a little bit racist. People didn’t respond well to foreign sounding surnames. So, I chose Ruthless Imagery to hide my heritage and to hide that side of everything.

Ruth Medjber’s photo story: Lockdown Portaits in the Window. Photo: Ruth Medjber

RM: This was back in, so I started my degree in 2004, so I was ready to kind of enter the workplace by 2006-2007.

And I found at that time in Ireland, I’m just going to say it, it was a little bit racist. People didn’t respond well to foreign sounding surnames. So I chose Ruthless Imagery to hide my heritage and to hide that side of everything. I also chose it to hide my gender because I was going to be entering the music business and unfortunately, that was still very much a boys club. There wasn’t a lot of women on tour. There was still that expression being bandied around, which was “no moths on tour.” So it was just all a load of lads in a tour bus. And you couldn’t bring your girlfriend because, they’d ruin the buzz or whatever.

AC: Has that changed?

RM: Yes it’s changed, not loads, but it depends on who you work with. I can definitely choose to work with great bands such as Hozier, who is amazing at hiring powerful, strong women. So our crew on Hozier was amazing. Our production manager, our production assistant, our tour manager, our artist manager, our artist manager’s assistant all women, all incredible women and just even working with them, the atmosphere changes so much. Even though the majority of the crew are still male, there’s no kind of that Trump-term locker-room speak. There’s none of that. It’s just everybody there to do their job and to look after each other on the road. And if you’re in a bus with someone for three months, you really need that sense of connection and family spirit and everything.

So there are bands out there who are choosing to look outside their own, maybe male heavy circle, and look to hire a couple of women. And they are really paving the way for the rest of us to make it enjoyable. So I hope when things come back, whenever they do come back, that more bands will look to the way that Hozier did it and hire some more women. So it’s great in a way. But that’s the story behind Ruthless Imagery.

AC: I suppose the business itself, the portrait photography, on the road with the rock bands, marketing yourself in that niche, it’s a very specific niche. How as a creative, as a professional in that area, do you begin that process to find your niche and then promote yourself?

“We don’t value it in the slightest. That’s why galleries here are free to attend, because it’s really hard to get people to pay into a gallery because we just don’t respect it the way we would going to the cinema or going into anything else. So galleries are free unfortunately.”

Ruth Medjber

RM: So music photography is far too niche to start out just doing exclusively. There has been some success stories where people pick up a camera and then they’re instantly an amazing music photographer, and then they all go on tour and they get discovered and it’s great. And that wasn’t the case for me. First off, I wasn’t an amazing photographer from the get go. I had to really learn my craft, it’s not a talent that came naturally. So it took years of experience.

And I did that through hard graft, but also free work. So I kind of looked at every job that would allow me to use my camera was valid, whether I was photographing the coolest band that was yet to come out of Ireland or I was photographing chippers around Dublin, which I did.

AC: As business photography, build a stock photo library of your business or whatever?

RM: I did everything. The worst job was probably, there was a magazine at the time, they were building a directory of pubs and chippers across Dublin and it was like, the internet was just kicking off, I must have it in my first year of college, so I was about eighteen. And they needed a photographer to literally go around and photograph every chipper and pub in Dublin. And I did it because it meant I had my camera in my hand and I could then call myself a professional photographer.

So I went with the kind of idea that I was just going to take any job that I could. And then, it didn’t happen overnight, I didn’t become a music photographer overnight. I was always a music photographer on the side-lines, but that never paid the bills. So I’d always do event photography, wedding photography, I tell everyone, wedding photography is how I got my house, it’s not through music photography, you’ll never get there that way.

It’s a slow burner and it’s something that you just have to put the effort into and don’t be too proud to take really bad jobs, if it means that you’ll get paid or it means that you might learn something, or it means that you might make a contact that will help you later on.

AC: And do you think in this country that we value the work of the creative industry enough? Do you have to sell your soul to pay the wages all of the time? Or do we value creativity?

RM: No, we don’t. We don’t value it in the slightest. That’s why galleries here are free to attend, because it’s really hard to get people to pay into a gallery because we just don’t respect it the way we would going to the cinema or going into anything else. So galleries are free unfortunately.

And then that has an effect, meaning that we have to go seek corporate sponsorship for our work. And then there’s compromises to be made in terms of, well I’m looking for corporate sponsorship, but that corporate sponsor might want me to alter the work slightly. So you’re always in this push and pull with other people.

AC: I know you’re seeking sponsorship for your exhibition for the Lockdown Portraits in the Window, anybody listening, I’m sure Ruth would love to hear from you. But I mean, that context of that challenge and the difficulty with that constant, as you say, pull and push of art versus cash, essentially.

RM: Yeah, that’s it. I mean, we have government funding, there is the Arts Council, but there’s a lot of artists in Ireland that are seeking sponsorship and seeking grants and bursaries. So it’s very hard.

Also, the way that we approach seeking grants is a little bit backwards, in my opinion. I mean, I’m a very visually creative person, but it’s very hard for me to fill out forms and to get my point across through words. It’s only something that I’ve kind of gotten a little bit more confident in doing in the last year or so. But I’ve applied for grants for maybe 12, 15 years. And I have a massive block when it comes to physically sitting down and filling out a 10-20 page document expressing the reasons behind my art.

That just doesn’t come naturally, it doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people who work in the visual media and having us base our entire bursary application in written form, it makes no sense. So I think we do really have to almost scrap the way we apply for funding in Ireland or the way the arts funding is kind of overseen and think of a better way of doing it.

AC: With that in mind, obviously the creative industry is on its knees at the moment. There are some moves to try to put some supports in place. What do you think we should be doing as a country to support the creative industries at this really difficult time?

RM: I think, it has to come from the government, it has to come from many different places, it has to come from the government and it has to be a lot more accessible. The other big problem we have is the COVID payment. A lot of people, a lot of my friends and colleagues are surviving solely on the COVID payment, which has been reduced again, which you’re looking at it going, how can they justify reducing that? These are people that are out there and they would be earning a lot more money than the €300 a week that they’re getting now.

But they’ve already got, they have the houses to pay for, the bills to pay for. These are long standing commitments that they can’t just turn around and not pay for all of a sudden. So it’s not as if, I don’t know where the government thinks we’re going to get the money, I mean, personally, I’ve already eaten into my tax money that I’ve saved for this year. And a lot of people have done the same.

So the government needs to understand the amount of people who are suffering and give us either an expectation of when we can get back to work or at least enter into some kind of discussion about how we can make it work, so how we can get venues back to work.

“And then that has an effect, meaning that we have to go seek corporate sponsorship for our work. And then there’s compromises to be made in terms of, well I’m looking for corporate sponsorship, but that corporate sponsor might want me to alter the work slightly. So you’re always in this push and pull with other people.”

Ruth Medjber

I mean, if you think about how ridiculous it is that The 3Arena is sitting there empty because you’re not allowed have more than 10 people or whatever inside it, where you’re looking at shopping centres, or Brown Thomas is allowed to have 350 people inside it. And we’re like surely, can we not just put those 350 people inside the 3Arena?

So there just seems to be no understanding and no desire to understand what it is we’re going through. So it has to come from the government, but I’d love to see a change in Ireland like totally. One of the things I do mention in the book, which is lovely, is that, I think people in their everyday lives did understand during lockdown how important art was as they sat there and they read their books.

Book sales kind of went up as people were trying to shop locally and people were enjoying live performances and people were watching poets recite their work from their homes. And I think during lockdown, because there was nothing else to do, they became aware of how crucial art was and almost how proud they are that we are a nation of artists, of poets, of all sorts of people. And I think that needs to kind of continue a little bit more. And people actually need to put their hand in their pocket a little bit more.

AC: And start spending on the experience

RM: Start spending on the experience of art. Going to galleries is one thing, but also shopping locally and supporting local artists and local bookstores, all that kind of stuff and trying to maybe consciously make this Christmas, an art based Christmas, a locally based one.

AC: You’ve outlined really I suppose, what’s happened to you and what you’ve achieved since March, which has been pretty phenomenal in terms of making and flexing those changes in a pretty radical way to what you’ve been used to. What advice would you give to anyone else in the creative industry in terms of finding their own way through the current crisis?

RM: There’s lots of things people can do really. It’s hard to tell someone to think outside the box when you’re… So I went into fight or flight mode, a lot of people didn’t. I had that response and I deal well in a crisis, but other people don’t. And it’s not to say that what they’re doing is wrong or what they’re doing is lazy or whatever.

Some people just don’t, they can’t create under the same stress that I can. So it’s nothing to feel bad about if you feel like you can’t create right now. But this might last another few years. So you kind of have to just get yourself back on track mentally to figure out how you’re going to do it next. But you can take advice from other people. I mean if, like me, you work alone, the best thing I’ve ever done is to reach out to people, not necessarily in my own industry, but to other people who would be sole traders, self-employed, freelance artists.

“I am going to construct a living room in a gallery in town and invite one other household in at a time to sit down and put on a record and have a cup of tea or a glass of wine. And I’ll be there to tell stories about my lockdown experience and the pictures on the wall, because the walls will be decorated with this lovely bespoke wallpaper I’m having made, which will feature, every person in my book will be on the walls. So there’s nearly 500 people in the book.”

Ruth Medjber

So like Holly who’s an illustrator or, different people who are designers and everything and just kind of see how they’re doing things and collaborate with people. It’s a really healthy thing to do is collaborate. And you don’t have to do it within a physical space. Holly and I designed that whole range over WhatsApp.

But then also kind of be a bit rest assured that there is some supports out there should you need them. Obviously the COVID payments are one thing, but there’s also your local LEO office. So they’ll help you in a way, if you’re thinking about getting your business online, which can be a really scary thing for a creative tactile artist to do is think, how do I build an online store? It could be as simple as going to the LEO or going to another artist whose store you admire and go can I…

AC: Can I copy that?

RM: Can I copy that, yeah.

AC: Can I have one of those please, yeah.

RM: I mean, I personally don’t mind when people come to me and they’re like, how did you do this? And I’m like, well, I did this by X, Y and Z. And I don’t mind helping you get to that as well. So it’s just reaching out to people, it can be a scary thing to do when you’re so used to working and creating on your own in your own little space, but it’s not as scary once you, we’re all just a bunch of lovely Irish people who are happy to help each other, you know? So that’s it.

AC: Okay, so what’s next for Ruthless Imagery?

RM: Well yeah, I have an idea in my head about an exhibition that I’m hopefully going to put on in a space in town to coincide with the launch of the book and the book is November 5th.

So I am going to construct a living room in a gallery in town and invite one other household in at a time to sit down and put on a record and have a cup of tea or a glass of wine. And I’ll be there to tell stories about my lockdown experience and the pictures on the wall, because the walls will be decorated with this lovely bespoke wallpaper I’m having made, which will feature, every person in my book will be on the walls. So there’s nearly 500 people in the book

AC: So there’s 500 images in the window of?

RM: There’s 150 windows, 150 homes. And in the homes there’s 500 people. And they’re the best stories I could ever tell is other people’s stories because I’ve met some fantastic people through this lockdown experience. And when I say met, I mean talk to them through glass and waved at them from a distance.

So the kind of living room experience is just going to be a nice, cozy space that people can come in and enjoy art without feeling pressure of the kind of cold gallery space that sometimes might feel a bit too clinical. This is a very lovely living room. And then ideally, I’d like to bring it around Ireland because it’s an all-Ireland project and I hate it when things only reach Dublin and you’re thinking about everyone else, everywhere else, and they deserve a good bit of art as well.

So if things go well and if I find a sponsor who would like to help me with the financial side of things and putting it all together because it’s not cheap to do, but I’m hoping that we can take it on a tour and bring it to everybody around Ireland.

And then next year I’ve got another book, so.

AC: Well, in terms of innovation, that word we’re all fed up hearing, pivoting, but ultimately just changing what you do to suit the new environment, I think it’s certainly a role model out there for many professionals and businesses to take on board some of what you’ve done.

RM: Thank you so much, Alison

AC: Ruth, thank you very much for joining me.

RM: It’s my pleasure. Thank you.

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