Pathé, Baby

I found these two reels of film on the street after the Place d’Aligre Market yesterday. My sister also found some treasure there last year, and is turning it into this fascinating project.

The first film I ever saw in a cinema was Laurel & Hardy’s “The Music Box” in the Carlton on O’Connell Street. I wasn’t much more than a baby myself but can still remember the thrill of it, very clearly. This is a different L&H film - does it look familiar? And if anyone has a 9.5 mm single-perforation projector please get in touch, I’d love to see what’s coming out of the garage in the other one…

Fifteen Years of New Year's Days.

Families

A bumper album of different kinds of families, for the season that’s in it.

There are more photographs of friends and family here.

I also do private commissions, if interested please feel free to get in touch.

I Can See Liam Now

I’ve been working on a series of portraits of artists-in-residence commissioned by the Centre Culturel Irlandais, and after making one today of Liam Ó Maonlaí we recreated the first photograph we did together. It was for a poster for the Hothouse Flower’s first single, released in 1987, which was neither yesterday nor the day before. He’s still looking great.

Lord of the Rings

A recent NYT piece about the bagel war in Montreal reminds me that when I was packing at the end of my last visit there, I left most of my t-shirts behind so I’d have more room for bagels.

PS: St. Viateur for life.

There are more of my Montreal photographs here.

Ireland for @ireland

My friend Helen O’Rahilly is curating the @ireland twitter account this week, and put out a call yesterday for photographs of Ireland. I sent her a few, and here is a selection of some of my other favourite images of the country.

Sunday in Montmartre

Part of the really interesting / disturbing Roger Ballen expo in Halle Saint-Pierre

Tangled Roots & Twisted Tales

I’ve known Ed McGinley for a long time, even before I photographed his band The Dixons in the 90’s. It’s great to see his latest album Tangled Roots & Twisted Tales described as a “slow-burning pleasure” in a recent Irish Times review. You can buy it here.

Ed McGinley in NCAD, Dublin.

There are more of my portraits of performers here.

L'esprit de l'escalier

L'esprit de l'escalier is a French expression that no French person seems to have heard of, which describes what it’s like to think of a perfect response long after the opportunity to deliver it has passed.

I was leaving La Guarida in Havana when I noticed him coming down the staircase, and when I asked for a photograph he knew just the right pose.

There are some more of my Havana photographs here.

Taken on my first visit to the MEP, in the company of my favourite exhibitions coordinator.

The staircase in my last apartment. Monter ces escaliers aide à garder le cul soigné, as they say.

Etymology

Borrowed from French esprit de l’escalier (literally “mind of the staircase”), with the definite article le (“the”) at the beginning of the term elided to l’. It refers to a description of the phenomenon in the essay Paradoxe sur le comédien (Paradox of the Actor, completed 1778 and published 1830)[1] by the French encyclopedist and philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784). During a dinner at the home of the statesman Jacques Necker (1732–1804), Diderot was left speechless by a remark made to him. He wrote: « l’homme sensible, comme moi, tout entier à ce qu’on lui objecte, perd la tête et ne se retrouve qu’au bas de l’escalier » (“a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument levelled against him, becomes confused and can only think clearly again at the bottom of the stairs”), that is, when one is already on the way out of the house.

The Staircase (Mystery)

Phuong Le

An out-take of film writer Phuong Le. You can read her piece “Feeling Seen: Whose Apocalypse Now?” here, and there are more of my portraits of writers here.

Into The Woods

I was given an unusual commission over the summer - to photograph some woods in the Wicklow mountains. They belong to a friend’s father, but as he’s become too unwell to visit them she wanted some prints made so she could bring the woods to him.

Here are some of my favourite images from the shoot.

He renovated this little cabin himself.

Fall Colours in New England

Taken while I was shooting around Boston for Cara magazine last week.