Can photography ever be an art comparable with painting? The idea that art is the privilege of an elite group is an illusion. The proliferation of photography, be it analogue or digital, has made it more relevant to everyone. Stop trying to define it. Artists such as Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol would be inconsequential without the use of photographs.
My introduction to art happened in the early 1950s in my hometown of Athy, Co Kildare. I would have been only about four or five years old. I remember our corporation house – nothing prepossessing about the terraced houses in Plewman’s Terrace. The homes I remember had statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Martin de Porres, and reproductions of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. At the centre of this revered painting is Jesus Christ, whose expressive features call attention to His announcement to those assembled. That one among them will betray Him.
On Sunday, devotion and worship at the Dominican church at the bottom of Convent Lane, by the river Barrow. The cottages along the lane were thatched, the smell of turf permeating the air. Mass was crowded with parents and their bawling children. I remember looking at an open prayer book bulging with memorial cards and the thumb-sized photographs in black and white of a loved one. These images have never left me, and introduced me to great art which I saw in cathedrals, churches and chapels.
With my aunt and uncle, we left Athy to travel to London in 1956. My aunt got a job as a caretaker of a red mansion house in Barons Court. Being in London gave me a stable and somewhat normal existence for 10 years. Going to St Edmund’s Secondary Modern School in Fulham was fun. I really enjoyed my time there.
His leer was so filthy it would have you reaching for hand sanitiser. A man over 40. A man who knew so, so much better
Irishman in Singapore: I wondered if I was foolish to emigrate in my 50s. But I feel more alive than ever
‘My sister’s boyfriend never left us alone at Christmas. Should I confront her?’
The five cheapest cars on sale in Ireland right now. Two are EVs
Aged 14, I saw a job advert. I applied, and after an interview I was invited to join The Evening News as one of the office boys, essential to the editorial floor. In charge of the 12 of us was a man called Bert Reading. The office boys would be called to bring mugs of tea for the subeditors and to collect folios of news sheets for the news editor that were being spewed out by Associated Press, United Press International, the Press Association, Reuters and many more.
[ The art of seeing: John Minihan on writers and photographyOpens in new window ]
I loved being asked to go to the darkroom situated on the top floor of Northcliffe House to collect photographs for the picture desk of The Daily Mail. Lunch hours would be spent having a cheese and pickle sandwich in St Paul’s Cathedral.
After some three months, Bert Reading told me there was an apprenticeship on offer in The Daily Mail darkroom – would I be interested? I became an apprentice in the darkroom in April 1962, 16 years young, during what became the swinging 60s. To this day I say a prayer to the Holy Blessed Mother for Bert Reading for offering me a chance that changed my life.
I still had lunch at St Paul’s Cathedral and photographed the Whispering Gallery in 1962. My photograph of the Whispering Gallery won the competition held once a week in The Evening Standard for best photograph. I was awarded five guineas by the picture editor, Geoff Snelling. That was my first publication and it was a considerable sum of money for a picture.
As an apprentice, I was paid 50 shillings a week. During the early 1960s I started photographing bands and performers including The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Who, Rory Gallagher, Chuck Berry and Little Richard to supplement my meagre wage as an apprentice. My pictures were being published in the Melody Maker, Disc, NME, the Evening News and the Evening Standard.
[ Laughing in the dark: John Minihan on Samuel BeckettOpens in new window ]
I had my mind made up to become a photographer when I finished my apprenticeship. From the very beginning of my life I never doubted that photographs were my métier. There was nothing else I ever wanted to do except take photographs, always in black and white. I have always loved taking and looking at them in newspapers, magazines and books for the beauty and power of them. I have on rare occasion used colour.
Many of my most iconic photographs have a religious connection: the Whispering Gallery (1962), The Wake of Katy Tyrrell (1977), even Lady Diana Spencer (1980). To have spent my early years in Athy was a privilege for me. It was an age of belief; religion dominated everyday thinking and behaviour. On my trips to Ireland I would photograph the holy shrines the length and breadth of the country. Holy wells, holy trees with pieces of clothing hanging from a branch put there by people praying for a miracle of a loved one.
A cathedral is a public experience, with its monuments of awe-inspiring grandeur. I always enjoy seeking out the statues – every one would be different. I would look for the best vantage points to take photographs where the range of light and shade falls within the scope of the film. I react instinctively with great excitement to all in front of my eyes.
In art, there is no figure more relatable than the Blessed Virgin Mary – in paintings by Bellini and Botticelli, in sculptures and in poetry, from Dante to John Dunne. In March 2023 I was a cancer patient at the South Infirmary hospital in Cork. At the heart of the hospital was St Joseph’s Chapel, which has been closed for 15 years. I expressed a wish to look inside, thinking there might be some mysteries that could be photographed.
Permission granted, I was not disappointed. I feasted my eyes on the hand-painted stations of the cross which traditionally began 2,000 years ago when the Blessed Virgin followed in the bloodstained footsteps of her divine son after the crucifixion on Good Friday. The Blessed Virgin is beautiful; old age has never touched her and she is always clothed in eternal youth, with varied iterations allowing her to be universal and constant in our world.
Photography was an unpretentious means of making known acknowledged masterpieces to those who did not know them. Photography was bringing a profusion of masterpieces to the artists; the artists themselves were revising their attitude towards the very concept of a masterpiece.
I was overjoyed to see that, after five years of restoration work, Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, reopened its doors in December 2024 to the world, dedicated to the Blessed Holy Mother as a symbol of faith and resilience.
Each time I left Skibbereen for my journey to the South Infirmary, I passed what was once the Sisters of Mercy chapel. The nuns ended their 144-year connection with Skibbereen in 2004. I photographed Sister Ita and the six remaining nuns in 2003. The chapel was sold; only the four walls remain as the building was completely destroyed by fire in 2020. I always look at the roofless, lifeless building and the remaining fresco of the mother and her son. It’s not a Giotto but still commands our attention.
The image of the Blessed Holy Mother holding the baby Jesus is possibly the most palpable expression of Christian theology’s insistence on God’s incarnation in our world. It also serves as a symbolic description of humanity itself.
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis
