Over the last week or so I have been doing a lot of driving through Ireland and have become fascinated by the thousands of election posters which now decorate almost everything that stands upright in this country.
What I am enthralled by is the way that people desire to project themselves in the photographs that they choose for these posters.
They come in all shapes and sizes of expression and often their choice of dress can be very revealing.

There are candidates pictured with their heads thrown back in mirth, they are clearly saying that they laugh in the face of recession, there are candidates with grim expressions which indicate their realsation of the seriousness of it all.
The most common expression I have noted though is a sort of Mona Lisa enigmatic smile, this is the expression of someone saying “We know how serious it is but will weather through ” and as such is obviously the most popular.
Then there is the clothes worn.
Too smart and they could be accused of being right wing, too casual and be thought scruffy.

The most interesting resolution of this dilemma was given by one Frank Gallagher in the Drogheda Area which I have passed through several times recently.
The same Frank has resolved the problem in a most original way.
He has produced two quite different posters ,so different in fact that I was convinced at first that there were two candidates of the same name running there.

In one picture Frank is pictured in a suit, hair oiled back, an careful smile on his face.He looks for all the world like a participant in “The Ballroom of Romance.”
In the second Frank is all “Man of The People”, open shirt, tousled hair, enigmatic manly smile.

He represents the Socialist Party of Ireland, it seems to me that this dual approach to image should make him an ideal council member.