Stephanie McBride finds that Andrew Nuding’s photobook Hunt the Wren mixes tradition and modernity, revitalising ways of belonging in place and history
Irish photographer Andrew Nuding recently self-published his elegant photobook Hunt the Wren. An NCAD graduate in fine art, Nuding has worked for – among many others – Dazed, Vogue and AnOther Magazine, which might seem a long way from the focus of this, his first book: ancient folk practices in Ireland, such as the Puck Fair and Wren Day, both of which are associated with fertility and prosperity. Nuding, a Dubliner now based in Paris, is familiar with these local traditions, having spent childhood holidays in Kerry at his grandmother’s.
One of Ireland’s oldest communal gatherings, the Puck Fair is held every August in Killorglin, Co Kerry. It is derived from the Celtic festival of Lughnasa, celebrating the harvest god Lugh and involving the crowning of a wild goat (the ‘puck’). The tradition of ‘hunting the wren’ on St Stephen’s Day (26 December) is thriving in Dingle, Co Kerry, and still practised by parades of mummers (or ‘strawboys’) across Ireland, including in Dublin, on Sandymount Green. The wren is a bird with folk associations as a trickster or traitor, as well as being known as king of the birds. Nowadays, of course, no actual birds are hunted.
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