GHOST ESTATES WERE once a symbol of Ireland.

A broken economy, a lack of housing and towns left empty by the promise of new residents and prosperity.

While the issue has been mostly resolved now, the unfinished developments serve as a reminder of our economic collapse and, symbolically, of the damage done to entire generations.

Galway-born photographer Ruth Connolly spent a year documenting these estates and her work is born out in a book – If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home By Now.

Ruth told TheJournal.ie that the project began as something a little more picturesque.

“I was doing a masters in photography in London and had a summer between my two years there. I was home and thought I’d take a trip around Ireland to see what I could see.

“I started seeing these ghost estates all around the place, which wasn’t what I’d been expecting, really. I thought I’d see this lovely picturesque Ireland.

“I was thinking I’d be photographing sheep in fields, but there was another side to Ireland.”

For a year, Ruth would fly home once a month and point her car in a direction of a ghost estate.

The results are the book, which mostly features estates in the midlands, Roscommon and Galway but takes in counties as far as Donegal.

Ruth says that she was drawn to the subject visually and societally.

“From a photographic point of view, I found them visually interesting. It was very bleak, very quiet.

“It’s not the most optimistic project in the world!”

Having returned to some of the estates, Ruth says that some are being lived in. But that makes the book a time capsule for a period in Irish life.

“It just seems like a good document of the country at the time. It’s a good snapshot of where we were.”

Ruth took the idea to Velvet Cell Publishing, based in Osaka, Japan, and found that it was run by Eanna de Freine, an Irishman.

That collaboration led to the book, which is on sale now and is receiving strong feedback from Irish people. Eventually.

“The reaction has been good. While I was doing the project Irish people thought it was a little depressing, but now they’re getting more interested.”

Read: Ghost estates are disappearing, but what’s actually happening with them?