Tony O’Shea and the ‘Me’ pictures: One of Ireland’s leading photographers and his quest to record everyday life

Tony O‘Shea was born in Valentia, County Kerry, in the far South West of Ireland. However, he spent much of his working life working for Dublin-based media outlets. He is one of Ireland’s foremost photographers. His record of everyday life over the past four decades, now preserved at the Photomuseum Ireland, is a lasting tribute to his talent.

I first met Tony O’Shea over 30 years ago when he came into my office to photograph me for a Sunday newspaper. He had the usual pressman’s kit of a big SLR with a flash, but he also produced a little Leica and put it on the table. I recognised what it was, but at this stage, I cannot remember the model, which was either an M4 or an M6. Tony said that he would like to take my photo with natural light using the Leica. Being a photography fan, although not yet having a Leica, I said ‘yes’, of course.

Love-hate

When the picture appeared, it had a lot of dark shadows, and you could just about see the shape of my head. I loved it, but my late mother hated the image, saying that it did not look like me. I don’t have that photo, and neither does Tony O’Shea. It may be in the archives of a long-since defunct newspaper or may have been shredded or scrapped. But I remember it as my first insight into Tony O’Shea’s world of photography.

Fortunately, Tony was taking photos like this one elsewhere in my native city of Dublin at around the same time, and these have now been well preserved by Photo Museum Ireland.

Christmas Turkey

This photo was taken at the Christmas Turkey at Mary’s Lane Dublin in 1991. The man with the barrow is an example of a classic ‘Dublin character’ that you would have found on the city’s streets then. The intriguing aspect is what is the Guard (policeman) doing talking to the man with the turkey on the wall. Is he asking about a street trading license, or is he just looking for a cheap turkey for Christmas? Possibly both?

Tony O’Shea took my photo at press gatherings on a number of occasions over the years, but I would often meet him on the street where he would have his press gear but would also produce a Leica M out of his pocket and say to me, “This is for the ‘me’ photos”. That meant it was not for his main press work but it was for his own personal projects, some of which got published in magazines such as In Dublin.

Ways of the Cross

This series, The Ways of the Cross, was produced in the late 1980s and recorded some of the religious practices of the time. Ireland has changed a lot since then, but more of that later.

Another series undertaken by Tony O’Shea is the one called ‘Border Roads 1990-1994’. Some of the images in this series show local people removing barricades from the roads around the border with Northern Ireland, which had been put there by authorities for security and other reasons. Remember that this was before the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement which brought an end to all such blocking as peace was more or less assured, which we hope will continue, notwithstanding current difficulties.

On the border

This image from 1993, showing young girls marching in front of an accordion band, is from a day of action by local people in County Leitrim for the opening of a road closed by British security forces.

Another picture of young children, this time watching a bonfire from chairs at the Hill Market on Cumberland Street in Dublin in 1987

This is not a scene that you would see today, walking around Dublin 37 years later. Even though he was not from Dublin himself, Tony O’Shea perfected a unique way of recording the people of Inner City Dublin. In the next image, he shows men at the Bird Market on Peter Street, Dublin, in 1990.

Birdmen of Dublin

This was a place where inner-city men brought caged birds to be bought and sold, but there was also a social dimension to such gatherings. It was a place where ‘birdmen’ went on Sunday mornings to meet up with other ‘birdmen’ to discuss (you guessed it) birds and, no doubt, other aspects of life. I believe that the Bird Market is still on the go (it certainly was just before Covid), and the attendance is still almost exclusively male.

I mentioned at the outset that Tony O’Shea was born in rural County Kerry. He has often travelled back there over the years, not only to visit family but also to attend such events as the Kerry Rowing Regattas and this Drag Hunt at Pound, near Portmagee in County Kerry in 1994.

Like the birdmen in Inner City Dublin, these Kerrymen show their affinity with their animals and also their competitive spirit.

Me and us

Tony’s images here are not just ‘me’ photos; rather, to anyone who is Irish, they are ‘us’ photos. As I mentioned earlier, Ireland has changed immensely in the intervening 30 or 40 years since these photographs were taken.

We are now one of the wealthiest countries in Europe on a per-capita basis and have a multicultural and diversified society.

However, these photos distil the essence of what it is to be Irish, with our good and bad points. They also engage with our culture, passion and community spirit. As such, they are timeless, notwithstanding how much our country has changed.

Preservation

Today, over 30 years later, I am the Chairman of Photo Museum Ireland, which truly values Tony O’Shea’s vision as a photographer. Our Digital Arts Manager, Daniel Scully, has worked closely with Tony to preserve his unique record of everyday life. This four-year process is a lasting tribute to his talent. It has enabled us to acquire this important work for our National Photography Collection — established to preserve the work of Ireland’s leading photographers. 

This important initiative has resulted in the premiering of a major retrospective exhibition featuring key works from Tony’s impressive 40-year career. It has supported the publication of his recent monograph ‘The Light of Day’ featuring a text by Irish writer Colm Tóibín, which has quickly sold out and his new 2023 publication Kingdom of Hounds, both published by RRB Books.

Some of Tony O’Shea’s extensive portfolios have also been published before under various titles for the Cafe Royal series. We cannot underestimate the importance of this work, which ensures that present and future generations can continue to enjoy his remarkable work

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29 COMMENTS

  1. One small but interesting detail: Father Browne was offered a ticket to travel to America on the Titanic. His Jesuit Provincial gave him permission to sail from England on the ship but required him to leave the ship at Cork, and to go no further. His photos of the interior of the Titanic were the last record of the ship as it had been, and formed the basis of the decor used in the film ‘Titanic’. Later, Father Browne was a chaplain in the British forces during the First World War and was decorated, I think, for his service. A great photographer too.

    • Thanks, John. Readers can see the details of this and the only photograph from the wireless room of the Titanic, which was taken by Father Browne, in my Macfilos article on the Vest Pocket Kodak called ‘In the Pocket: Photography from World War One’ which went out in August 2017. Father Browne got a lifetime’s supply of Kodak film as a result of this episode. One of his most famous photographs was of a man looking into the window of the Kodak shop in Grafton Street, Dublin around 1930. Father Browne seems to have been allowed to take photos at the battlefront, notwithstanding Earl Kitchener’s rules about no photography following the infamous Christmas Day football match in 1914. Kitchener was, like Tony O’Shea, born in County Kerry, which may surprise some people. Father Browne’s WWI photographs have been published in very a nice book

      I agree with you, Father Browne was a great photographer, who should be more widely recognised outside of Ireland.

      William

  2. Thanks William for your article which made me discover another Irish leading photographer. My knowledge of photographs of Irish daily life is limited to Father Browne and Cartier Bresson. The are wonderful images of Kerry by Cartier Bresson . I often studied Belfast murals and images of Northern Ireland by Don McCullin when I was working on the troubles before the Good Friday agreement as the troubles were part of the curriculum in the late 90s and early 2000s here. Mr O’shea’s images remind me of some images by R. Depardon of Glasgow.
    Jean

    • Thanks Jean. The Magnum Ireland book is well worth getting, even if it is largely in ‘as others see us’ mode. You are right to pick out Father Browne as, for a long period, he was the best Irish photographer at recording Irish people and their daily lives. His photographic journey went back a long way, even before his famous short trip on the Titanic. Besides HCB and Elliott Erwitt etc, others who have photographed us well have included Martin Parr and Chris Killip, both of whom have had their work exhibited at our gallery. I am a great admirer of Don McCullin’s photos, particularly those which he took in Belfast in the early 1970s. Also, one of our regular readers, Don Morley, worked as as a photographer covering the ‘Troubles’ in the 1970s. The local Northern Irish press photographers who were responsible for covering events in Northern Ireland during those troubled decades were featured in a film, directed by one of my fellow board members, Tom Burke, called ‘Shooting the Darkness’, which was shown on BBC and RTE TV networks. We also launched a book of the same name at our gallery just before Covid and I met most of the photographers involved who had some truly harrowing stories to tell. I also sent a copy of that book to our ‘colleague’, the illustrious Mr Morley, and it brought back a lot of memories for him.

      William

      • William

        I have just watched the trailer to “Shooting the Darkness”. The actual film is not available on BBC iPlayer.

        As a serving young army officer during the “Troubles”, the trailer brought back memories to me. Yes, some very harrowing indeed.

        Chris

        • Thanks, Chris. I will be seeing the Director of ‘Shooting the Darkness’, Tom Burke, soon. He is on the board which I chair. I think that I got a link from him before to give to Don Morley, but he may have something that we can use now for Macfilos readers. It is a harrowing film, which is aptly named, but with your military background you will be able to relate to a lot of it.

          William

    • Dorothea Lange also published a book of images taken in rural Clare (west of Ireland) in the 1950s that is well worth checking out. I recall you can now access many of her images online.

      • Thanks, Tom. It was the County Clare photographs which we printed and hung for the exhibition in the National Museum of Ireland in 2019. The President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, who is patron of our own Photo Museum’s National Photographic Collection, opened the exhibition. Yes, many of Dorothea’s photographs can be accessed online. One big issue with all photographic collections is trying to find out where they are by searching databases. and another one for works by Irish photographers is to try and keep them in Ireland. All of this takes time and money, of course.

        William

        William

  3. Thank you, William, for this brief look into Tony O’Shea’s work. My school, St. Columba’s High School, in New Delhi, is a Christian Brothers institution. Though now the brothers are mostly Indian during my student days they were all Irish. Looking at Tony O’Shea’s photos I am reminded of another photographer, James Ravilious, who in the decades following the 70’s covered rural and urban west England but also Ireland. Maybe they knew each other.

    • Thanks Fahriz. I was educated by the Irish Christian Brothers myself. I managed to survive them partially because my father always ensured that I was in the same class as my older brother. Their reputation has suffered greatly in recent years and they are virtually extinct in the land of their origin. I have a great deal more of Tony’s images and will feature a somewhat different set in my upcoming article for the UK Leica Society magazine.

      In 2014 the wife of James Ravilious did a wonderful presentation of his work at the Leica Society AGM in Stratford on Avon. Their daughter is now curating his work. I have noted the similarity of the work of Tony and James before, although their life journeys were different.

      William

  4. Hi William, thank you for sharing this story and these photos. I thought both the photos in your article and those in the linked Guardian piece were wonderful. I am sure Mike would be very happy to embed such links directly in future articles so that you do not have to endure the additional hurdle of a moderator giving them the thumbs up when posted in a comment. A number of the photos reminded me of life in Wales when I was growing up – terraced housing, soggy streets, cloudy skies, kids hanging around up to no good! Marches and religious banners did not feature, but otherwise, very reminiscent of scenes I remember. Thanks again for sharing Tony O’Shea’s photography with us. Cheers, Keith.

    • Thanks Keith. Yes, Wales back in the day would be a good analogy. The religious processions and the border issues in Ireland are largely gone now and Ireland is now a wealthy and multicultural country. Tony certainly captured the country as it was 30 or 40 years ago. I met him a lot during the 1990s and I always felt that he was somewhat different to the rest of the press pack, not least because he had and used a Leica for his own work. There were other press photographers who wanted to step outside the daily grind of day to day press work and do their own thing. One of them is Eric Luke who also spoke at the Leica Society International Conference in Dublin. Tony and Eric are great friends, naturally.

      William

      • Annual religious processions of this type were a fixture in South Lancashire where I grew up. The Whit Walks were obligatory and all the school children had to take part. There was the Protestant Walk and the Catholic Walk. A lot of friction between the two and, I suppose, being near to Liverpool, this was a reflection of the differences most obvious in Northern Ireland even now. I don’t know whether this sort of thing still goes on in Lancashire, but I suspect the occasions have been whittled down to almost nothing. I imagine 60 years ago in Wales there would have been religious walks at Whitsun. But times change.

        • Thanks, Mike . Here in Ireland, for Catholics, we had the ‘May Procession’ for the Blessed Virgin Mary and in June we had the ‘Corpus Christi Procession’ in which the Sacred Host would be paraded around the parish. These are long since gone. Then in rural parts we had things called ‘patterns’ where people would walk around ancient Holy Wells many times saying prayers and a bishop would turn up to say mass. In Northern Ireland they still have a thing called ‘The Marching Season’ usually around the celebration of the Battle of the Boyne (1690) on 12th July. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether this is religious or political. I suspect it is both. The ironic thing is that the Battle of the Boyne was fought on our side of the border.

          I am aware of Orange marches in Liverpool and in Scotland. Back in the day there would have been Catholic processions in Liverpool and, I suspect, in Glasgow and other places as well. I was not aware that such events had reached as far as Wigan.

          Such events were captured here by our own photographers, such as Father Browne, the Jesuit photographer. However just on opening the book ‘Magnum Ireland’ I can see a photograph by Henri Cartier Bresson from 1952 with the caption ‘ Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, Feast of Corpus Christi, near Corpus Christi Church, Dublin 1952’. It shows two nuns being followed by young girls in First Communion frocks. One of the girls is looking straight at Cartier Bresson. The nun nearest the camera is ignoring the photographer, but she is actually carrying a camera (possibly cine) as well as Rosary beads.

          Tony O’Shea had plenty of precedents to go by and I am sure that he saw scenes like this in his native County Kerry.

          William

  5. Thank you William! I love articles like this – Cultural Anthropology at F8 – of people, places and times we otherwise would not see. There’s some real storytelling in each frame here. If only I could get that many great shots like this!

    • You got that one right. Dan Scully who has worked for some years with Tony scanning and preserving his collection says that Tony should really be described as an anthropologist rather than as a photographer.

      William

    • Thanks George. Please reach out if ‘you ever go across the sea to Ireland’ to quote the old song ‘Galway Bay’.

      William

      • My Own Dear Galway Bay, just listened in youtube Bing Crosby version.

        For the strangers came and tried to teach us their way…

        Guess better in an Irish pub, but I still keep some Irish whisky from my already gone Irish neighbor 😉

        • Yes, Bing had the ‘Irish thing’ down pat, including being a Father O’Malley in two films. My late father would sometimes sing the first few lines of Galway Bay. His photos of Galway Bay have appeared here on Macfilos and, recently, I gave some of them to the National Museum of Ireland.

          William

  6. William- Another wonderful article. It was such an honor to meet Tony, hear his words, and see his work at the Leica Society meeting in Dublin. Many thanks for making that happen.
    Bob Levite

    • Thanks Bob. Tony had never spoken in public about his photography before Leica Society International came calling. On that night he said that he said to me that he would never do it again. He let me do all the talking at the opening of his exhibition, but, believe it or not, he actually repeated his public interview with Dan Scully in the middle of what was a very cold January in Dublin.

      I have posted a link to the Kingdom of Hounds pictures from the Guardian, but, according to my computer, it is still ‘awaiting moderation’.

      William

  7. Mr Fagan, you have the most interesting friends, those photos are great! Can you clarify is he a freelancer or did he work for just one newspaper?
    I will have my daughter pre order Kingdom of the Hounds tonight. A beagle I called Sarge was my first dog, he was a rescue from a farm cause the Chickens were just to tempting. Still miss him!

    • Thanks Richard and John. John, you may or may not have recognised the dogs as Kerry Beagles. They were being used here for a drag hunt, so no chickens or any other animals were likely to be harmed. On 17th January, the Guardian newspaper did a picture feature showing Tony’s photos of a Kerry Beagle drag hunt. I will send the link to this to Mike and he can either include it in the article or just send it to you. I can’t post the link here as that is ‘verboten’.

      William

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