John Minihan is well known for his iconic images of Samuel Beckett. Here he muses on some aspects of the beginnings of photography and turns his lens and his thoughts to the West Cork artistic community
On seeing his first daguerreotype, the painter Paul Delaroche announced: ‘painting is dead!’ He was wrong of course. What had died was something else: privacy. The camera’s eye never sleeps. It has become what we have programmed it to be; ever watchful in our daily lives. Photography is now within everyone’s reach and it is constantly changing with the use of digital technology. This technology has significantly altered how we perceive a photograph in today’s world. Photography has a history, you could say they have something to do with resurrection, a calling up of the past where the spectator is invited to explore the life and meaning of the photograph
