Lelia Doolan pays tribute to an adopted son of the West; film-maker, photographer and writer Bob Quinn who recently gifted his Conamara photographic archive to NUI, Galway.
In these blank seasons, Bob Quinn is an indispensable compatriot. The poet Denis Devlin remarked: “That which comes into the world to cause no trouble deserves neither respect nor patience.” On these grounds alone, Bob Quinn would command our regard. But taken altogether, his contribution to Irish life and art in documentary, in narrative film, in writing and in photography has been a consistently stimulating gift.
His exhibition of photographs in Galway this summer was a surprising reminder that this willing exile, this Dubliner, has lived and multiplied and plied his art in Conamara for the past forty years.
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