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.
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.
RIOT!
RIOT is a truly amazing show, filled with hope, love and revolution. I’ve seen it twice, and if I was in Ireland this week I’d go and see it again. The show has been on a sell-out world tour and is back to do a short run as part of the Dublin Dance Festival - get a ticket while you still can (available here).
It was a lot of fun doing these promo shots in Hang Dai, Dublin. Poster design, art direction, digital alchemy and general Pantification by the ridiculously talented Niall Sweeney.
You can see more of my pictures of performers in this gallery.
Walls
Down in the Park
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.
I'm a creep
When I first met the wonderful Helen Sloan, she told me that all photographers are creeps. I was a bit taken aback, but she’s right - photographers want to see without being seen, to capture things that wouldn’t necessarily happen if people were aware that we’re there, quietly shooting away. Just as when this sleeping man caught my eye at Le 104 the other day, though I was quickly outcreeped by his girlfriend Agathe, who snuck in for a close-up. She’s also a photographer, of course.
Paris is Peeling
Some paint peeled away from the wall yesterday on Rue Denoyez, giving an idea of just how long this street has been a favourite gallery for Parisian graffiti artists. It really is a great city for all kinds of street art, and you can see more in my Paris feature for Cara Magazine here.
The puppeteer of Notre Dame
Irma and Pascal photographed in Paris, November 2017.
Pascal and Irma Delamaire were friends of my mothers for many years, although I only met them for the first time shortly after I moved to Paris in 2017. Pascal and I quickly discovered that we’d much in common, including that earlier in life we’d both been puppeteers. My fledgling puppetry career was over before I left my teens, but he’d gone on to perform for many years, ending up on the best pitch in Paris – performing classical puppetry from inside a booth directly opposite Notre Dame. When he looked up during the show, all he could see beyond the puppets in his hands was the two bell towers of Notre Dame, and it gave him a great sense of connection with all the other puppeteers who’d performed in the same spot, with the exact same view, for hundreds and hundreds of years. I love that.
Some Paris art...
…that I really didn’t like. Well, maybe the Royale with Cheese was alright. You can see some portraits of artists whose work I do like in this gallery.
Seamus Larking
My First Riot
I got some concerned calls from friends and family in Ireland when they saw I was out taking photographs at the Gilet Jaunes protests. I assured them I was fine, having learned a valuable life lesson during my first ever riot*.
The current protests also remind me of attending a much quieter riot during the winter of 2011 in New York.
And of going to the May Day riots in Berlin, which turned out to be a very civilised affair.
*I was seventeen and had just started taking photographs when I went to my first riot, which kicked off during a squatter’s protest in Nørrebro, Copenhagen. Unfortunately I didn’t get any good pictures - after a few hours hanging around in case something happened, when it actually did I was far too busy running down a narrow city street as fast as I could from a terrifying wall of charging police, equipped with barking dogs and waving long mahogany batons. I didn’t have a press card, but even if I had it would have made absolutely no difference - they were determined to pacify everyone on the street with extreme force, no matter who they were. So my top riot tip is this: in a riot, stay as far away as possible from the people who are most likely to hurt you, and those people are probably the police.
My book of New York photos is available online. Limited-edition prints from the book are available for purchase at The Copper House Gallery in Dublin. You can see a piece I did on New York for Narratively here.
Mathias Zwick does great photographs of the Gilet Jaunes protests in Paris, and there’s a country-wide live feed here.
Which makes the heart grow fonder?
L'Absinthe, 1876, by Degas
L'Absence, 2012, by me
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.
Lisbon?
About eighteen months ago I had a screenplay to finish and wanted to go somewhere warm, cheap and interesting* to get it done, and Lisbon sounded like it would be just the place. It didn’t happen in the end, but I did get to visit for a couple of days last January and very nice it was too.
*When a friend from Northern Ireland overheard what I was looking for, she couldn’t stop herself blurting out “Then why on earth would you move to Lisburn?”