The sounds and the visions

Christy McNamara's photography captures the spirit of traditional music, because he's a musician himself, he tells Siobhán Long

All pictures and no sound. That used to be the definition of an Irish divorce in the days when unhappy couples had no other (legal) choice but to put up with each other. Until lately, that's been the fate of Christy McNamara too, but for an entirely different reason. As a photographer, he's been slowly building a reputation for himself in corporate, landscape and portrait photography.

From Crusheen, in Co Clare, McNamara has cast not so much a cold eye as a warm gaze across the daily rituals and routines of his home place, capturing the extraordinary in the ordinary. His monochrome photographs of traditional musicians in full flight have managed to depict the essence of the musician from an insider's perspective, and have avoided the fate of so many lensmen who have snapped and vanished into the ether, without so much as a "by your leave" to their musical subjects.

With a recent solo exhibition in the Avenue in London's Mayfair, and previous exhibitions in New York, San Diego and Los Angeles, McNamara has already experienced considerable success as a photographer with a particularly inquisitive eye. Counting among his patrons Whoopi Goldberg and Brad Pitt, he might be tempted to immerse himself fully in the belly of the (lucrative) Hollywood beast.

Instead, McNamara has chosen to mix music with photography, attracted by what he sees as the yin and yang of the two pursuits: sound and vision in concert rather than in conflict.

McNamara's perspective as a photographer might be partly explained by the fact that, as a box and concertina player, he has a feel for the music and the musicians with whom he plays. Unlike the photographer who might venture to siphon some of the soul of his subjects in order to bag a good picture, McNamara is both participant in and observer of the world from which he has fashioned an impressive portfolio of images.

This duality is tangible in McNamara's debut album, The House I Was Reared In, which is bathed in magnificent close-ups of the accordion and concertina, and steeped in deliciously lonesome tunes from home and away, with a few from McNamara's own hand tossed in for good measure.

"I really felt that every aspect of this CD was important," McNamara says, explaining his motivation for imposing a high production standard on the recording. "I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and instead of just putting a string of tunes down, I wanted to tell a story. I felt that if people are going to buy this, that they would have to put a value on it. With all the talk of downloadable this and downloadable that, I knew that the 'product', if you like, had to be worthwhile if people were to buy it."

The House I Was Reared In is a collection that's immersed in McNamara's home place of Clare. He is a first cousin of the musical prodigy, Martin Hayes, probably the most innovative fiddle player of his generation, who still balances an enormous affection and respect for the tradition. McNamara's father and uncle, Joe and Paddy, played in the Tulla Céilí Band with Martin Hayes's father, P Joe. Even his own compositions such as Tae Pot Wood and The Maid's Lake ache with a sense of place, where time doesn't so much stand still as lodge immovably in the memory banks of the emigrant.

CHRISTY MCNAMARA SPENT many years in London, playing in the Fiddler's Elbow, a great music house run by musician and writer Peter Woods. The pair's shared love of the music led to the publication of The Living Note in 1997, a book celebrating the musical inheritance that kept many an emigrant sane during tough times - including, it would seem, McNamara and Woods themselves.

The album title is from a line in The May Morning Dew, a song of emigration and loss associated with the singing of Dolores Keane. "I felt that the title, The House I Was Reared In, was one very powerful way of informing the listener about where this music came from," says McNamara. "I grew up in that kind of house, where music was everywhere, and that was very important to me, but I didn't want this to be nostalgic or 'a grá mo chroí' in any kind of way either. It's my story, but I'm not trying to be clever about it. I'm just trying to be honest about who I am."

A sense of place is central to his love of and his appetite for traditional music, McNamara insists.

"I think music draws people to Ireland," he says, "and while there is a mystique about it, there's also a deep sense of place in it. I feel that playing the music has given me a deep sense of belonging, which might be a curse as much as a blessing. It's rooted in the landscape and in the people. My music is like my accent. It's who I am."

McNamara has no difficulty accommodating the twin drives of photography and music in his life, since both come from the same place, he believes.

"They're both rooted in feeling and in opinions about where I'm from and what I'm about. I think any artist worth his salt would question their own essence. I think that's the essence of any creative project, but it's challenging as well.

"When I photograph people from my own community, I feel like I'm both on the outside and on the inside. Someone once described it to me as being 'a gregarious loner' and I think there's a lot of truth in that. In a way, you need the confidence of people around you in order to portray them honestly. People get caught up in technology and having the latest gear, but it's never about that. Too often, that just gets in the way, in fact. When I was photographing musicians, I was in the midst of them playing, and I had to do it in a way that I wasn't going to piss everybody off. That's not something you learn from a textbook. Taking pictures is a two-way thing, and the credibility comes from growing up in the midst of the music, and learning to listen."

Somehow it's difficult to imagine McNamara existing in isolation from people, from the company that fuels his love of both pictures and music. "When you meet like-minded musicians, suddenly you have that fission or fusion, or something that has no words," he says with a smile. "I'm moved by being in the midst of playing a tune, and taking a photograph of that experience comes naturally out of that. It's not something that I try to manufacture."

ELEMENTS OF The House I Was Reared In conjure memories of Timothy O'Grady's chronicle of the emigrant, I Could Read The Sky. O'Grady's collaboration with photographer Steve Pyke explored the interplay of pictures and music as a method of documenting the emigrant experience with searing clarity. Does McNamara see a place for his music in the Ireland of today where the immigrant experience is intensely more visible than that of the emigrant?

"There are a lot of people who come here who are moved by the music," he says, "and especially by its authenticity. There's emotion and feeling that's universal in songs and tunes such as A Stór Mo Chroí. I would say that the question of integration is all new to us, and it's going to take another 10 years before we can really understand how these influences will play out.

"We've had a lot of fusions and confusions in Irish traditional music over the years that never worked, and I sense a certain lack of confidence among some musicians, but my feeling is: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. We should never underestimate the power of the music, particularly in its emotional pull, so what its relevance might be to new arrivals remains to be seen."

The House I Was Reared In is distributed by Claddagh Records. www.christymcnamara.com