I’m going to be working in Dublin for the week of May 27th, if anyone would like me to shoot for them let me know.
Heroes and Villains
It’s great to see when somebody I’ve done a portrait of is in the news for all the right reasons.
Tom Kennedy, photographed in Dingle for the So Far book. More pictures here.
Sometimes it’s for other reasons, however.
Rolf Harris photographed for the New Musical Express, 80’s.
Try as I might, I couldn’t get past his well-worn cheeky chappie persona. Then I asked him to take off his glasses. There was only a brief moment before he put them back on and started gurning again, but it was long enough to see a very different side of him.
“There is a Jekyll and Hyde nature to Rolf Harris”- Sasha Wass QC, during Harris’s trial.
Lian and Grandad at the Glucksman
Lian in the Glucksman yesterday, photographed by her proud father.
Congratulations to my sister Lian, who has some of her work in The Glucksman gallery in Cork as part of their current group exhibition, “The Parted Veil”. It's made up of photographs she took of our grandparents' belongings in 2002, along with text from interviews with some of the family at the same time, and is up till the 28th of June.
A couple of years ago I was asked to contribute two portraits for the cover of the Hothouse Flowers album “People”. The first person I photographed for it was my grandfather.
Tim O’Driscoll, from the Leaders gallery
And the other person I photographed was Lian.
Lian Bell, also in the Leaders gallery
Trois Mecs à Paris*
*Or as one of my sisters put it, “OMG where are you getting these absolute rides”, but I don’t know how to say that in French.
Living your best life
Filmmaker Audrey O’Reilly photographed in Paris, May 2019.
If I haven’t shot your author/contributor/profile photo, I’m sorry but you’re just not living your best life. Be more like Audrey.
Clare Langan in Paris
Clare Langan photographed in Paris, May 2018.
Video artist Clare Langan is a national treasure, and I was very glad to get an opportunity to photograph her in Paris last year. I’d already seen her piece that’s currently in the Moving Woman show at La Galerie Danysz, but I went to see it again on Saturday. It’s so beautiful.
Galerie Danysz
You can see other portraits of artists in this recently updated gallery.
Me and the Da
John Horgan
I had a quick dive into the archives when I was back in Dublin, and came across this portrait I made of my father to accompany an interview in Cara magazine about one of his books. It’s one of my favourite pictures of him, along with this one:
Me and the Da
You can see other portraits of friends and family in this gallery.
The Ma and MacWeeney
Alen MacWeeney was my mother’s first boyfriend, but the relationship didn’t last after he moved to New York to become Richard Avedon’s assistant. He went on to have a stellar career as a photographer there, often coming back to Ireland to shoot a long-term project on the travelling community. I bought one of his prints of two traveller kids with the proceeds from the first script I ever sold, and it’s up in pride of place on the living room wall.
Alen MacWeeney photographed in Dublin, April 2019.
My mother Sara, aged 18, photographed by Alen. He added the image of himself looking at her and sent it from New York.
It was great to catch up with him when I was back in Dublin last week. He told me about the new biography of Avedon, saying “it reads like a thriller”. I’m halfway through its 700 pages, and he’s not wrong.
You can see some of my other pictures of artists in this gallery.
Growing up in Belfast
My portrait of writer Kate Thompson is in today’s Irish Times, illustrating her piece about growing up in Belfast. You can see more of my portraits of writers in this gallery.
For Oliver
Oliver Stanley was a beautiful man, and a really great friend to me. He died, aged forty-one, on this day in 1995. Remembered with warmth, much love, and this dedication.
He’d be pretty tickled to know I was posting a picture of his arse to the entire world, all these years later. There’s a portrait of him in this gallery.
Flattery in Paris
We saw these two walking towards us, and I said “He must be in love”. “He must have done something terrible”, replied Nicole.
I first met Nicole Flattery when we were both in the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris, and was really impressed by her clever and funny short stories. We did a portrait in the centre that became the author photograph in her new collection, which was given a rave review ("a highly addictive mix of deadpan drollery and candour") in the Guardian yesterday.
Nicole Flattery in Paris, 2017.
There are more portraits of writers in this gallery.
A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot
“One night, Majella O’Donnell brought her son Philly to be shot in both legs”. So begins this week’s episode of An Irishman Abroad, featuring journalist and film-maker Sinead O’Shea telling the story of how she came to make the feature documentary “A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot”.
Director Sinead O’ Shea, photographed in my Dublin studio last year.
The Image You Missed
Donal Foreman’s “The Image You Missed” is a really interesting essay film about his relationship with his estranged father, Paris-based documentary maker Arthur MacCaig. I saw it last year in The Pompidou Centre, and asked Donal to sit for a portrait the next day. We met at the cafe in the 5th Arrondissement where he last saw his father, who died in 2008.
As I was shooting, a man who looked like Arthur MacCaig passed by in the background.
“The Image You Missed” screens this evening at the Odeon Point Square Cinema in Dublin, as part of the Five Lamps Arts Festival.
What have you got to say for yourself?
I shot these portraits of Margaretta D'Arcy and John Arden for a piece on married couples in The Sunday Telegraph Magazine. They refused on principle to appear in the same picture as they weren't actually living together. Margaretta filmed me as I photographed her, and when we were finished took me up to the attic where there was a tangle of wires hanging from a bare bulb in the ceiling. She flicked a switch, thrust a microphone at me and said "You are now broadcasting live on the world's only Irish language, feminist pirate radio station - what have you got to say for yourself?" Not a lot, as it turned out.
Trans / Punk
I shot some portraits recently of Irish transgender people for Michele-Ann Kelly’s Transition, Family and Me project. When Sarah R Phillips and I started talking about music it turned out we’d both been to many of the seminal punk gigs in Dublin. I asked if she’d seen the legendary Slaughter & The Dogs play in Belfield, and she told me not only was she there, she still goes to see them every chance she gets. Respect.
Today is the International Transgender Day of Visibility.
A History-Making Nerd
Liz Carolan is a self-confessed data and transparency nerd. In 2018, she set up a project to bring transparency to online advertising in Ireland’s referendum on the 8th amendment which banned abortion. That project led to a change in policy by Facebook and Google, and prompted commitments by the Irish Government to reform electoral regulations. Reading about her work makes it even more obvious that treating social media, particularly Facebook, with an ever-increasing degree of scepticism can only be a good thing. See also: T-Bone Burnett’s incendiary keynote from SXSW.
I photographed Liz last week in the new Fumbally Exchange, Dublin 8.
A different kind of portrait
Sometimes something very different comes along, such as the couple of times I’ve been asked by friends with cancer to help make a record of their experience. One such friend asked me recently to photograph her lumpectomy scars, and we were both very happy with how the pictures turned out. I’m also very glad to say that she’s doing well now, after a gruelling round of treatment. To be asked to do something like this feels like a real honour.
Cold War
Adrian Wojtas, a very talented photographer (and my former assistant) was in Paris for a few days, and we shot some portraits that ended up reminding me of images from Cold War.