Now UCC it... now you don't!

THE man behind the ‘UCC Past and Present’ initiative, Max Bell, is a third-year student at UCC, undertaking an undergraduate degree in Digital Humanities & Information Technology.

He explained that the course “supports my love for bridging the gap between people and technology, as well as exploring, producing and critically analysing digital content. It encourages you to investigate what it is to be human in the digital age”.

Max (right), who was awarded the Digital Humanities Excellence Award in 2020, added: “This project was a wonderfully rewarding experience, many local people were stopping to investigate the set-up and there was plenty of conversation about their memories of each place I was photographing.

"I enjoyed hearing real-life accounts of these spots that highlighted the drastic change in the area over the years.”

He is originally from Cobh and explained how the UCC idea sprang from a project in the town.

“As a young photographer, the first place you tend to chronicle is where you live,” said Max.

“There is no shortage of talented photographers and artists who have documented aspects of Cobh in an engaging way. With this in mind, I wanted to do something different.

"This came in the form of finding historic images of places of significance in Cobh and aligning them to their present-day setting to visually demonstrate how that place has evolved over time.”

When that project appeared online, Max was asked by UCC photographer Tomás Tyner to carry out the same concept on the college campus.

Max praised the department and academic staff as a whole for their encouragement in facilitating the UCC project, particularly Tomás and University Archivist Catriona Mulcahy.

He added: “I hope people enjoy these images as I do, and I hope the project sheds a light on the changes our campus has undergone and will undergo as we continue to shape it.”