Write & shoot

WHEN YOU see the photograph of a writer on the jacket of their book, you don’t tend to wonder how it came to be there. Jacket shots present themselves as a finished product – this is how I look, and that’s the end of it.

But there’s a story behind every photo. Who made the image? Was the writer happy in front of the camera or did the photographer struggle to get them to relax?

Ireland Literature Exchange yesterday launched postcards of eight contemporary Irish writers which it will distribute at book fairs all over the world from Frankfurt to Beijing.

The portraits were taken by the young Irish photographer Rich Gilligan; he tells how these literary luminaries looked from the other side of the lens.

JOHN BANVILLE

John has a little flat on the quays. I think he just goes there for work – it’s very clean, organised, uncluttered. He was cool and really helpful. But I could tell he wanted me out as soon as I was in the door. It was like, have you got enough shots? Okay.

Don’t get me wrong, he was great – and I knew what I wanted to shoot straight away because his desk space was so small and organised. It was perfect. For most people I’d try a couple of different options but with John I could see that it would work. Also, I could sense he was really busy and I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. He was really intense, and I love when someone is that intense. As a photographer, there’s nothing worse than when you go to shoot someone and it takes a long time to put them at ease. You can tell in a photograph – especially a formal portrait, where it’s obvious that the sitter is aware of being photographed – if the person is not comfortable with the scenario. You can read body language so easily in photographs.

CLAIRE KILROY

She has this crow on her desk, which she talks to all the time. She says it features in two of her books. I wanted all the pictures to look contemporary, but since she’s the youngest of the group I put more distance between myself and her than in the other shots, in order to capture the feel of that room. The whole scenario that she has – the glass cubes behind her, the desk, the crow – everything about it just works.

She has her laptop and notebooks there and that’s where she spends most of her writing time. I didn’t direct her at all, so the way she’s sitting, and the movement – that totally came from her. But it took a long time to get it right. The light was really weird that day – whatever way the cloud cover was, it would get way too bright to shoot, so much so that we’d have to wait for clouds to come over and then try again.

But she was really patient. This is all stuff that makes sense in my head when I take a picture, but I’m sure to an outsider it could just seem completely OCD. But she had lots of ideas and gave a lot to it, and wanted to make the shot work.

COLM TÓIBÍN

When I went to Colm’s house I was immediately overwhelmed by the madness. It was great. So much clutter. Books upon books and notebooks and scrapbooks and bottles of wine and chocolates – crap everywhere. But aesthetically pleasing crap. He wanted to use a back room with nice bookcases, which was much tidier. We tried shooting there – but he has these huge bay windows at the front of the house and a desk where he seems to do most of his work and I was really drawn to that. He has a print by Richard Avedon and when I commented on it he ran off downstairs and reappeared with this original Avedon print of himself, shot in the 1980s, in New York I think. I nearly forgot about the job for a while and we chatted about Avedon. We only shot pictures for, I’d say, five minutes. I had a feeling what I’d got was really strong. He couldn’t have been more open or helpful. He ended up giving me a whole collection of his books, all signed.