Edinburgh Napier University

  Ron O’Donnell’s photographs, vibrant and effervescent, daring and humorous, touch upon allegory and myth, identity and mortality. In each case he turns a spotlight upon the foibles of human life. His images speak of love and loss, folly and foolishness, the decadent and the demoralised; in fact, the whole chimera of contemporary caprice. In this, he is a modern Bosch, or Brueghel, exploding the carnival excess of modern life. His photographs provoke laughter and sorrow in equal measure; a revelation hidden inside a comic moment. For his In Memoriam lecture Ron will discuss these themes, particularly in relation to his ‘Day of the Dead’ series created after a Leverhulme Trust funded research trip to Mexico City and his installation of ‘Day of the Dead’ artefacts for the National Museum of Scotland in 2002.