Photographing Colm Toibin earlier today as part of a series of portraits for the Gate theatre.
Irish Times article here
Selfie
Via Aindreas de Staic
Via Macdara Smith
A Dirty, Sexy City
At least according to Walter Benjamin, who described Marseille as “the world’s wickedest port.” I was only there for two days so didn't get to see much wickedness, but the city definitely feels much more exotic than anywhere else I’ve been in France. I saw some great art in Mucem and got lost in tiny side streets that could have been in Tangiers, and met some very interesting people like Dirk, a Belgian screenwriter and ex punk who wrote this piece of spiky New Wave that years later was used in a Prada campaign.
I’ll be back.
Landed
My first ever camera was a Polaroid, but it wasn’t as fancy as this.
Saw this at the Brocante in Rue de Bretagne today, and couldn’t resist. They don’t make the film for it any more, but I have some squirrelled away back in Dublin.
KWOO
Kwoo photographed in Dublin, May 2019, using this filter.
Last time I was back in Dublin I did some portraits of my neighbour Kwoo. She’s a poet, animator, performer, resident DJ for The Demented Goddess and all-round interesting person. You can follow her on Twitter here, and hear her mixes here.
Caoimhe photographed in Dublin, May 2019
Back on the mat
Haven’t been to Aikido for ages, so found a dojo in Paris and went last night. Despite a minor injury* and the struggle to understand the mix of Japanese and French, it was fantastic. Am aching all over today ( a friend calls it Ow-kido) but it’s very much worth it. I’ll be back.
*a sprained toe, thankfully mine. It would be very déclassé to injure a fellow student during my first visit to a new dojo. On the upside, I did learn a new French phrase**
PS: This is great - a demonstration of jiu-jitsu, an earlier form of Aikido, by the absolutely delightful Miss May Whitley and her bandit friend Mr. Charles Cawkell.
** “Mon orteil est un peu blessé”
Back on the Mainland
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
Belleville Sky #2
Belleville Sky #1
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.
If You'll Let Me
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.
Deep End in Zurich
Poster by Annie Atkins
Delighted that Deep End Dance is still being screened, almost ten years after we made it - this weekend it will be shown at the ZÜRICH TANZT festival. You can see the film here.
Life under ground
Fountain
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.
All photographs are accurate
Richard Avedon photographed by Irving Penn on August 23, 1993
“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. ” Richard Avedon
“Though the session didn’t last longer than twenty minutes, I will forever remember the feeling of standing barefoot in that light-filled room while Avedon apologetically tilted his head toward the lens I kept ignoring, as if the camera were a socially inept friend that the two of us needed to make concessions for”. Myla Goldberg on being photographed by Richard Avedon.
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.