In collaboration with Photo Museum Ireland, The Lilliput Press published Scribendi – Irish Writers: 1985-2025 by Steve Pyke featuring over 100 portraits and interviews with Ireland’s greatest contemporary writers – from Seamus Heaney to Louise Kennedy; Anne Enright to Edna O’Brien. Steve Pyke writes :
‘I come from the English midlands, but I became a photographer in Ireland. I made my first portraits in Dublin in the early 1980s. It was immediately apparent to me then how important Irish writers are to their country.
One of my earliest portrait sessions was in 1985, with the writer Neil Jordan in my first studio in London. I’ve gone on for the subsequent forty years photographing the Irish writers whose books have excited me.
Early sitters include Seamus Heaney, Edna O’Brien and John McGahern. More recent trips have led me to the next generation, such writers as Anne Enright, Kevin Barry and Louise Kennedy. I photographed these people because I had read their books and admired and wanted to meet them, and also to make a record for posterity. Their faces can bring to others something of the feeling and way of thinking behind their words.’ – Steve Pyke
An exhibition curated by Trish Lambe was on view ealier this month at the Photo Museum Ireland.
Steve Pyke MBE is the author of nine books, including I Could Read The Sky (Harvill), Philosophers (OUP) and Poguetry (Faber). He has received many awards for his photography, including an MBE in 2003. His work has appeared in the National Portrait Galleries in London and Washington, D.C., among other museums. He was staff portrait photographer at The New Yorker 2004-2014
Steve Pyke : Scribendi – Irish Writers: 1985-2025
The Lilliput Press
Hardback
ISBN: 9781843519485
$47.00 USD
https://www.lilliputpress.ie/
Photo Museum Ireland
https://photomuseumireland.ie/
