The Light of Day

"Tony O’Shea is interested in the moment where the ritual and the casual face each other in the complex light that comes from Irish skies. He likes gatherings and public spaces. And he is watching for the second when, even if his subjects are performing, a guard has been let down, and the camera becomes an uneasy, tentative, hesitant window into the soul. He seeks images of individual loneliness and isolation, figures in a state of reverie and contemplation, or figures in a state of excitement." - Colm Tóibín

RRB Photobooks & The Gallery of Photography Ireland are pleased to present The Light of Day by Tony O'Shea. The book is a retrospective of O'Shea's work, spanning 4 decades from 1979 to 2019, it was published to coincide with an exhibition of his work at the Gallery of Photography Ireland.

The edition includes 100 copies with a signed and limited 10x8" silver-gelatin print of 'Welcoming home the Irish team after reaching the quarter-finals of Italia '90, Dublin'. 

"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. Each image wants to be a short story."- The Irish Times, 2020

"Strange animal spirits are everywhere apparent in his pictures: raggedy boys stand on horseback on city streets, hounds are held at bay on misty bogland; in a famous series, Dublin housewives carry Christmas turkeys home from a side-street butcher, heads and necks and beaks dangling at their knees" - Tim Adams, The Guardian