Werner Blaser

Before the end of the first millenium there had arisen on the Irish Aran Islands the cells of the Early Christian hermits, round towers built solely of stone, and tall crosses incised with biblical subjects. On the smallest Aran Island of Inisheer, some 30 miles from Galway, there is only a small village with thatched limewashed cottages, a lighthouse for navigation, and the loosely piled stone walls raised by human hand. The landscape has a primal bleakness and ruggedness about it, a vast and ever-receding horizon encompassing its flatness, and the waters of the Atlantic isolating it from the mainland. The land is separated from the sea by stone walls which are spreak like a net over the rocky island and whose form and feeling are typically Irish and of extraordinary charm. During a phase of renewed activity the tradition of wall building from the available rubble is being continued by the local people. Here past and present are one.