PÁDRAIG KENNELLY, the photographer, television cameraman and founder of the Kerry's Eyenewspaper, has died at his home in Tralee at the age of 82.
On his retirement as editor in 2010, Pádraig Kennelly was the longest-serving editor of a regional newspaper in Ireland.
Just two weeks ago he travelled to the Irish Cultural Institute in Paris – accompanied by his son the businessman Jerry Kennelly – for the launch of an exhibition based on photographs he and his late wife Joan had taken in the early summer of 1969, during the visit to Ireland by Gen Charles de Gaulle.
“If you were lucky, you had a good chance, and I was very lucky because I got quite a number of images of him.
“I knew the countryside very well,” he said of the iconic photographs.
Known as “senior” among his loyal staff, he continued to write a lively column weekly in the paper he and his late wife Joan established in the basement of their home at Ashe Street, Tralee, in 1974.
The newspaper now sells throughout Kerry and claims to have a circulation of 25,000.
A pharmacist by profession, Kennelly’s interest in photography developed into a photojournalism business with his late wife, who was also a talented photographer.
Pádraig and Joan Kennelly between them took over 500,000 photographs of life in Kerry between 1953 and 1973.
The photographs have been digitised and collected in the Kennelly Archive, which was launched in 2009.
Pádraig Kennelly of Tralee and Skirlough, Camp, is survived by sons Pádraig J, Jerry, Brendan and Kerry, brothers Ted and Emmet, sister Eithne, and seven grandchildren.
Reposing at his home in Ashe Street today from 2pm, with removal at 7pm to St John’s Church, arriving at 7.30pm. Requiem Mass tomorrow at 10am. Interment afterwards in Rath Cemetery, Tralee.