Eamonn Doyle took this picture in 2014, not long after he got serious about photography. Like much of his work, it isolates a detail in the life of the streets at the centre of Dublin, where he lives. Doyle’s first response to these streets was as a DJ and techno producer, boss of the D1 Records label and founder of the Dublin Electronic Arts Festival – Deaf – which fostered a generation of creative engagement in the city.
Doyle eventually closed the festival and sold a lot of his music equipment after the financial crash in 2009; he reinvested some of those funds in a Leica camera, and started looking hard at the life of Parnell Street and O’Connell Street and beyond. He did his growing up here – his father ran a bingo hall; not for nothing is a new book of his work called Made in Dublin.
Characteristically, as in this picture, the bodies that Doyle focuses on are often seen from behind. Faces are not absent from his photographs, but his camera is equally interested in the way that people move, hunched shoulders against the wind of the Liffey, backs bent by lifetimes of work, or sudden unexpected expressions of agility, as here, when a sister is saved from falling. He says some of these habits of looking come from an inherent shyness and working out ways to photograph without making himself a part of the language of the picture.
After that it is about concentrating on what seems to matter in a scene; where the emotion lies. In this, Doyle has said, photography is the opposite of painting. “When you start to paint, you’re presented with a blank canvas. When you go out to the street you’re presented with a completely full canvas. It’s then about paring away.”
Eamonn Doyle’s work will be showing at Michael Hoppen Gallery, London SW3, 1 May-15 June. Eamonn Doyle: Made in Dublin is published by Thames & Hudson on 2 May