The exhibition features a selection from O’Shea extensive practice which has been digitally archived by Photo Museum Ireland over the past 3 years.

As a subjective documentary photographer he is alive to the possibilities of the moment as it unfolds, its capacity to reveal a deeper truth about how people live. O’Shea’s most enduring interest is in the myriad of small ways in which history is actually lived, as something that happens between people, at home, on the street, wherever they happen to be. Each image wants to be a short story.'- The Irish Times, 2020 'A retrospective book of his life’s work to date, The Light of Day, is full of natural wonders and human struggles that surface from the borderlands during the Troubles and in the rituals and recreation of his city. In these hard-hitting, eloquent pictures he has captured the many complexities of a country undergoing profound change, at the same time, securing for himself a key place in the canon of Irish photography. O’Shea combines the approach of a poetic European documentary tradition – an empathetic, if at times almost Beckettian sense of the absurd – with an anthropologist’s eye for social realities. Curated and produced by Photo Museum Ireland, this retrospective exhibition brings together for the first time his seminal bodies of work - The Hill, Dubliners, Bird Men, Turkey Markets, Kingdom of Hounds, Border Roads, Ways of the Cross, Italia 90 and Never Forget series together with his more personal images of his late father. A legendary figure in documentary photography, O’Shea is regarded as one of Ireland’s most important contemporary photographic artists. Photo Museum Ireland is delighted to present The Light of Day, the first major retrospective exhibition of work by Irish photographer Tony O’Shea. Tony O’Shea - The Light of Day A retrospective exhibition by a master of contemporary Irish photography

Tony shea book