NEW COLLECTION: Blasket Islands 2021

As many of you already know, Dingle is one of my favourite locations to photograph - it’s a place I gravitate back to time and time again - so naturally when lockdown was lifted earlier this year, the first place I found myself heading to was the Dingle peninsula. But I didn’t stay on the mainland for this trip, instead I boarded a ferry to the Great Blasket Island with my daughter, Ali, and we spent two nights there under a blanket of mist with some donkeys and sheep for company.

The Great Blasket Island was home to one of Ireland’s greatest storytellers, Peig Sayers, and we had the unique experience of staying in the cottage that was once her home (with no electricity!). I didn’t study Irish in school (as I was 15 when I moved to Ireland), but I still had to attend the Irish classes and I can remember being fascinated by Sayers’s stories at the time, so it was incredible to sleep under the same roof that she once inhabited, crafting her legendary tales.

There is a sense of melancholy about the island that is both beautiful and tragic; the derelict cottages are a reminder of the hardship endured by the island’s residents and their eventual evacuation to the mainland in 1953. And this melancholy was very much reflected in the weather during our stay. A heavy mist enshrouded the island for our entire trip, and its constant presence dictated the mood of this new collection.

A thunderous cloud looking down on the sea with an island in the centre and some headlands in the background.

A hill featuring a renovated cottage and a derelict cottage with two sheep looking straight at the camera.

Two donkeys grazing with cottages and the sea in the background.

Sheep grazing on the Great Blasket Island with the Sleeping Giant in the background and an ominous cloud overhead.

Two donkeys grazing on the Great Blasket Island by an old stone cottage with a blanket of mist and birds overhead.

To explore the full collection, click here.

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