Suzanne Behan - The 50 Francis Street Photographer

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The 50 Francis Street

Photographer

The 50 Francis Street

Photographer

A fascinating view of Dublin and its people

through the photographs of John Walsh

Suzanne Behan

Copyright 2017 Suzanne Behan, text

Copyright 2017 John Walsh, photographs

The right of Suzanne Behan to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted

by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Ireland in 2017 by HACHETTE BOOKS IRELAND

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the

publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which

it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 473661684

Hachette Books Ireland

8 Castlecourt Centre

Castleknock

Dublin 15

Ireland

A division of Hachette UK Ltd

Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment, EC4Y 0DZ

www.hachettebooksireland.ie

Contents

vi

The 50 Francis Street Photographer

Dublins Moore Street, 1963.

For my beautiful grandmother Suey, although I have never

met you I feel I have known you a lifetime

ix

T

. hey say certain smells will remind you of specific occasions,

people or places, and, for me, smelling the chemicals used

in a photographers darkroom instantly take me back to my

childhood and memories of my granddad and his home and

studio at 50 Francis Street. Growing up, I spent a lot of time

with my granddad and my aunt Maureen, who lived at number

50 too. My two older brothers were in the scouts and weekends

for them meant hiking or camping, but I chose to spend my

weekends being cared for in Francis Street.

When I start to think about my grandfather, John Walsh,

warm, funny and loving memories come flooding back to me. He

was a great man. When I reflect on his life, the words that come

to mind are hard-working , respectful , humble , ingenious , family

man and total legend though it is impossible to summarise

just how kind and special he really was. I never thought I

would be writing a book about him and his work, but I am so

Introduction

x

The 50 Francis Street Photographer

totally grateful and proud to be able to share his passion for

photography and his lifes work with others. Every photograph

featured in this book has come from his archive.

My earliest memories of my grandfather are of him taking

me by the hand when I was two years of age and walking me

down the aisle of the church at my aunt Paulines wedding.

I was the flower girl but, being only two, I still needed to be

minded and Granddad was given the job. This is such a vivid

memory for me. I can remember him holding my hand tightly

and trying to entertain me so that I would keep quiet during the

ceremony. It had been my second birthday the day before, and

as soon as the church music began, I decided to join in with a

version of Happy Birthday to Me I imagine he was probably

a little irritated at having to head outside with me rather than

staying and taking as many pictures as he would have liked.

Growing up, he was always taking our picture. We would run

and hide from him, saying, Oh, heres Granddad again with

the camera. How many cars or people will he move out of the

way this time to make sure the picture is perfect? To this day,

this is a standing joke in my family: when someone steps up to

take a photograph, we say they are doing a Granddad. Little

did we realise then just how many photographs and wonderful

memories he would leave us and many, many other families.

As a child, the house at 50 Francis Street was a curious and

sometimes scary place. It had been the home of Archbishop John

Thomas Troy in 1787 and had big, heavy doors that led into the

back room and bedrooms and a huge wooden staircase that now

reminds me of the film Annie . This staircase went up two flights

with a landing in the middle and on the sides of the steps were

boxes and picture frames with my granddads work stored in

them. My mam and aunts recall being made to scrub these stairs

by their granny.

Introduction

xi

The rooms were also huge with high ceilings. The upstairs

rooms were decorated with elaborate plasterwork showing

religious emblems and bunches of grapes. One room had a

large, ornate, Italian marble fireplace with the Lamb of God and

figures carved into it, all put in place for the bishop during his

time there. When my grandparents moved in, this room became

their sitting room and my granny placed her ornaments and

trinkets lovingly on the mantelpiece. That room was her family

sitting room when my aunts were growing up. The remnants of

my mams and my aunts teenage years still remained when I was

a child, with a Beatles poster stuck inside the wardrobe door.

The bed I slept in was cast iron with a candlewick bedspread.

When it got dark, that house scared the life out of me.

At the front of the house was the shop and my granddads

sacred space, his darkroom.

This small but magical place had a green light bulb that I

found fascinating as a child. My granddad had partitioned off

this room from the shop and took great measures to ensure that

no light could get in; every nook and cranny was filled in or

blacked out so that the process of developing the film wouldnt

be ruined. There were bottles and jars filled with all sorts of

chemicals, including developer, stop bath and fixer. There were

metal trays, timers and his enlarger, all his tools of his trade.

He would always have his latest batch of negatives and

photographs hanging up to dry on lines of string going from

one side of the small room to the other. I still remember the pure

magic of being allowed to help develop a photo, of watching the

image suddenly appear on the paper in the tray of chemicals,

with a loving nudge from him to take it out of the developer

quickly so I didnt overexpose the photo. This was better than

any toy I could have been given. He would tell me to go find

xii

The 50 Francis Street Photographer

objects and trinkets, and showed me how to make photograms

the process of placing the objects on the photo paper which

was then exposed to light, resulting in a silhouette-type picture

with the shape of your object clearly visible on the photo paper.

This taught me how light and shadows worked. I loved making

these and probably wasted lots of his photo paper, but he never

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