‘Permanent Placement Possible’ is a multimedia project I completed in 2020. Constructed from video interviews, photography, audio, archival photos, and documents it explores themes of identity, loss, control and ownership of data by focussing on a legal anomaly that prohibits Irish adopted people born in Ireland from gaining access to records relating to their birth and adoption while allowing Irish people born in the United Kingdom full access to this information in most instances.
At its core is a ten minute video narrative which explores my efforts to find out about the circumstances of his birth in London and subsequent adoption. Parallel with this I engaged with a number of Irish adoptees who recount the difficulties they have encountered in their pursuit of historic personal information. Adopted people born in Ireland have limited or no access to this information, and when it is acquired it is often obscure, or even censored to protect the identity of the birth mother.
Adopted people are searchers. In Ireland restrictions make this inquiry difficult, slow, and often fruitless, when using formal channels. As a result people resort to social media, genealogists, and DNA websites to help establish their personal histories. They are looking for more than their birth parents. They are looking for more than medical history. They are seeking something that they often find hard to define, the missing piece in the puzzle. They are nostalgic for something they never experienced.
O’ Brien says about the project: “The three words that make up the title of this work were written about me in a memo from a social worker to an adoption agency administrator: ‘foster mother happy to keep baby until permanent placement possible’. I was a ten-week-old baby at the time, living in foster care with a Mrs Cumberland at her home in Upminster, East London. I had been born in nearby Romford. A 21 year old woman from the west of Ireland had travelled there while she was pregnant, to give birth to me in secret, and to have me adopted through an institution called the ‘The Crusade of Rescue and Homes for Destitute Catholic Children’. A few weeks after this memo was written I would be brought to an affiliated orphanage in Ireland. From there I was adopted into my family.”
‘Permanent Placement Possible’ was undertaken by O’Brien as part of his studies for the MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography from London College of Communication (UAL).
A big thank you to the following people for their help in making this work: Majella Ann Connolly, Liz Delaney Molloy, David Herlihy, Fred Logue, Deirdre McElligott, Claire McGettrick, Joe Neville, Paul Nolan, James Parrott, Marguerite Penrose, Tony Smith and Kevin Whelan.