Nevill Johnson: Paint the smell of grass - Eoin O'Brien

church; Johnson’s wandering priests and nuns are strange images, unworldly, surreal, slightly
mocked yet always subtly powerful.
In this world Johnson must have been an equally confusing figure. His sympathies clearly lay
with the subjects of his photographs, yet he was by upbringing, bearing and accent a figure of the
establishment; even worse, the British establishment. However he explained the presence of
himself, his Leica (purchased with a grant from the Arts Council) and his assistant, Anne Yeats, it
is clear from the photographs that he must have calmed any concerns and perhaps even began to
fade into the background and record an unselfconscious life going on around him. The notebook
exists in which he divided the city in a grid and then noted the route and the photographs he had
taken according to this grid.
A lot of these photographs are of children, at ease and showing off, intrigued by the stranger,
playing in groups and unaware of being watched. They are sometimes dominated by their
surroundings, more often in control of the familiar streets that form their playground. The grime and
decay of their surroundings adds a layer of pathos beneath the energy, confidence and enthusiasm of
childhood. One image of a girl and her even younger brother on the steps of a gaunt Georgian
doorway that gapes behind them suggests the inescapable poverty that will swallow them up.
Graham Greene, from a similar generation and background as Johnson, visited Dublin in
1923, wrote “It is the poverty and expensiveness of Dublin that first impress visitors. The houses
are dilapidated, the roads unswept…But the most impressive thing about Dublin is its expectant
but apathetic air. Everyone is idle but waiting.” 2
Many of the adults he photographed cannot be seen outside the context of this cycle of
poverty, yet Johnson always evokes the “maverick undertow” of the Dubliner, “buttressed by
piety, capped and shod by wit and crafty indolence”. In the same way, despite the ruthless honesty
in Johnson’s recording of the city, his own love of its visual appearance, its light and atmosphere
is almost always there.
As with his paintings, Johnson’s social anger and his sense of humour co-exist within these
photographs. His eye is always struck by the surreal, particularly in junk shops or religious
statuary, and by strange juxtapositions, such as the two gauntly black nuns like crows passing a
boarded-up tobacconist’s shop watched by a curious group of seated girls and a rather dismissive
pair of standing boys.
Photographers such as Perry Ogden have commented on Johnson’s technical skill with his
Leica, particularly as he does not seem to have had any experience as a photographer. It seems
inexplicable that Johnson never returned to photography in any substantial way in the future.
Little seems to have happened with these photographs at the time, but a selection were eventually
2 Graham Greene – ‘Impression of Dublin’, 1923, published in ‘Reflections’, ed. Judith Adamson, Penguin, London
44 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell of Grass
Two women, Parnell Street
Lower Dommick Street
Nevill Johnson l The Dublin years 1947–1958 45