Pandemic Spring

In March 2020, just as a global pandemic was becoming a reality, Stoneybatter-based photographer Gregory Dunn unexpectedly found himself back at his childhood hometown of Deal, on the Kent coast, for an extended period. Armed with a modest compact camera, Dunn set out to capitalise on the opportunity, inadvertently afforded him by Covid-19, to simultaneously record an uncertain future and revisit his past.

That record is captured in Pandemic Spring, a book that interweaves photographs with real and imagined narratives inspired by Deal and its hinterland. The book also contains a book within a book that sets the work within Greg’s personal history and the unprecedented event of the pandemic itself. The introduction was written by legendary Irish musician Cathal Coughlan, formerly of Fatima Mansions and Microdisney, and was his last work prior to his untimely death in 2022.

The book features a new typeface inspired by the lettering used in the distinctive Type 13 British Rail signal box, one of which is situated in Deal.