Look of the Irish: the communities captured by Tony O’Shea – in pictures
Four decades of work by the Irish photographer feature in a new photobook. His dignified images, according to his former editor Colm Tóibín, offer ‘a hesitant window into the soul’
Good Friday, Seán McDermott Street, Dublin 1983/84
The Light of Day is a photobook retrospective of Tony O’Shea’s work, spanning four decades from 1979 to 2019. It will be published on 13 November by RRB Photobooks and the Gallery of Photography Ireland.
Good Friday, North Inner City, Dublin 1984
The majority of the photographs were taken in Dublin and County Kerry and, in spectacles of religious processions and marches, marking significant events of the recent past, convey a sense of community.
Divorce referendum protest at the GPO, Dublin, 1986
This is the first retrospective book of work by O’Shea. A large number of the images are previously unpublished.
Delivering fuel, North Inner City, Dublin, 1987
From city streets to the remote countryside, O’Shea’s photographs document the spectrum of public life across Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Painted pony, Smithfield, Dublin 1989
Often warmly humorous, the images are unified by his subjects’ dignity and lack of self-consciousness. Collectively, they demonstrate O’Shea’s ability to combine the bleak and the joyful.
Dublin Bus, 1989
As an editor at the magazine In Dublin in the late 1970s, Colm Tóibín sent O’Shea out on Dublin buses to capture the life of the city from the upper deck. Read more by Tim Adams in the Observer on this image of two boys and a kestrel here
Welcoming home the Irish team after reaching the quarter-finals of Italia ’90, Dublin, 1990
Ireland broke a record by making it to the quarter finals without winning a match in normal time. They were eventually beaten 1-0 by the hosts, Italy.
Christmas Turkey Market, Mary’s Lane, Dublin 1991
O’Shea’s photographs take in everyday life in markets and on bus journeys.
Reopening of crossing on the Leitrim-Fermanagh border, 1993
‘Tony O’Shea is interested in the moment where the ritual and the casual face each other in the complex light that comes from Irish skies. He likes gatherings and public spaces. And he is watching for the second when, even if his subjects are performing, a guard has been let down, and the camera becomes an uneasy, tentative, hesitant window into the soul’ – Colm Tóibín.
Day of action to reopen a border road closed by British security forces near Kiltyclogher, County Leitrim 1993
‘He seeks images of individual loneliness and isolation, figures in a state of reverie and contemplation, or figures in a state of excitement’ – Colm Tóibín.
25th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Derry 1997
An exhibition of O’Shea’s work at the Gallery of Photography Ireland in Dublin is planned for early 202.
