Irish photography: the early years

Seán Sexton is one of the world's pre-eminent collectors of photography, and is driven by a desire to show Ireland's past as it really was, not as history tells it. He talks to KATE HOLMQUIST

SEÁN SEXTON’S GREATEST regret is that his mother didn’t use her Kodak Brownie to photograph life as it really was on the family farm in Co Clare – instead she drew water from the well to bathe her children in a tin tub, dressed them up and took snapshots to “impress the relatives in America”.

How the son of a horse-and-plough farmer became one of the world’s pre-eminent collectors of photography, with what is regarded as the best collection of Irish historical photographs in existence, is a picture in itself.

His greatest coup came in Bermondsey market in 1981, when he paid £100 for a trunk packed with thousands of photographs of flowers, fruit and vegetables by the then unknown Charles Jones. These simple photographs anticipate modernism and Jones is now regarded as a genius, with his photos fetching many thousands each.

Sexton has certainly lived a life less ordinary, selling those Jones still-lifes, taken in the early 1900s, at such high prices through a Manhattan gallery that they’ve been his main source of income ever since and the subject of one of his books. “You either have the eye or you don’t,” he says as the wind whistles past his mobile phone in Co Clare.

"I have phenomenal knowledge," says Sexton, who is entirely self-taught, has read Joyce's Ulyssesseveral times and quotes friend Declan Kiberd in conversation.

At 17, Sexton took the boat to London dressed as a Buddy Holly lookalike in the company of “cattle in the hold, suicidal brown woodwork and some fella singing sean-nós – it was Leonard Cohen meets Rothko”.

Self-educated apart from national school and an inspiring and “liberated” African Missions priest from Co Kerry, who used any excuse to turn a Latin lesson toward Michelangelo, Sexton did all the jobs that young emigrants in the 1960s did, while following his passion for going to markets and auctions to find old photographs. He had an eye: appreciating what few others then did: that it was difficult to find pictures of ordinary people.

Unknown labourer, taken circa 1858, is one the most valuable photos in the Seán Sexton Collection, now showing at the Gallery of Photography, because it depicts a rough and unwashed man who would never have been able to afford to have his picture taken – portraits costing two months' salary for a labourer at the time. "This show is a political statement for me," says Sexton.

The exhibition reflects Sexton’s desire to collect photos that show post-famine Irish life as it really was, rather than as historians have taught us to perceive it. He believes that the famine was a deliberate genocide and has sought out photographs that will give young people a truer sense of history.

His taste runs from the beautiful to the bizarre, as the show demonstrates. Sexton has collected strange photos of male genitalia infected with venereal disease, a Goyaesque nude study shot in Waterford by Louis Jacob at the turn of the 20th century, and a stunning piece of photorealism — Old and New Housing at the Claddagh, Galway, c 1930, giving new meaning to the term "ghost estate".

He never stops buying. This past weekend he bought 1916 and Civil War items in Miltown Malbay for €1,800, which he’s rather pleased with, but he despairs at the turn Irish culture has taken. RTÉ is “an Anglo-American colonised cultural dereliction” and the Government should be increasing the culture budget, not cutting it: “Cutting the budget means picking up the mental health bill. Art is essential for mental health,” he declares.

Sexton is a charming ranter, but his greatest pleasure seems to have come from the many times he has trumped well-known collectors, such as the time he beat Mark Getty to a box of photos by Sir Frank Brangwyn, “rubbish” he bought for £1,500 which was later valued at $400,000. He has an eye, all right.

The Sean Sexton Collection, Gallery of Photography, Dublin, runs until November 21st