The good ideas are always those which look perfectly obvious - once they have been done, that is. A man with a camera, photographer Bruce Gilden, teamed up with a man with a story, novelist Dermot Healy. You could call it a bit of a two-horse race.
Gilden is a New York-based photographer who works for the international Magnum picture agency. For two years, on and off, he went to race meetings all over Ireland with his camera. The black and white portraits in this book capture the gamut of emotions generated by a day at the races: anxiety, joy, concentration, furtiveness, horror, jubilation, weariness, watchfulness, and that expression which can only be described as the cute-hoor look. Looking at these pictures, a colleague in the sports department commented, "We are not a handsome race". Presumably, no pun was intended.
To accompany the portraits after the off of the races, Dermot Healy has written an original short story entitled Before the Off. Whether you're interested in what happens before or after the off, if you're interested in racing at all, you'll be off instantly to look at this book for yourself.
Rosita Boland is a writer and journalist
