Wicklow: A Personal View, a newly published book of landscape photographs by Walter Pfeiffer, has "captured the county in its many, many moods", said Dick Roche TD, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.
"I know that our statutory agencies will use it in the promotion of the county," he said when he launched the book in Dublin this week.
Pictures taken in winter during rain and flash floods "have their own particular lonely, mystic atmosphere", explained Pfeiffer.
To capture an image, he said, you must "familiarise yourself with the landscape and you keep going back over and over again. You start a relationship almost until you know when they're at their best - in early morning or in a thick mist".
The Hon Garach a Brún, who lives in Luggala, Co Wicklow, which is at the heart of this photographic essay, came to celebrate the book. He writes in the introduction that "like the hills and the bogs with their laments and their majesty, Luggala has known its share of sadness . . . The sadness, like the music, like the land, endures".
Others who attended the book launch were the publisher and editor of the Dubliner, Trevor White; singer Dolly McMahon; Aideen Friel, of Oxfam; Cilian Fennell, former head of programmes at TG4; Clare Kavanagh, of Windmill Lane; and Arts Council member Noelle Campbell Sharpe, proprietor of the Origin Gallery on Harcourt Street, where work by Listowel artist Linda Graham is currently on view.
Others among the friends, Co Wicklow neighbours and supporters who packed into a restaurant on St Stephen's Green in Dublin for the launch included Liz McManus TD; Kathy Gilfillan and her son, Max McGuinness; Vincent Murphy, who designed the publication; Edmond and Ruth Kenny of Carrigeen Lodge; and Count Randal MacDonnell of the Glens, author of The Lost Houses of Ireland.
Wicklow: A Personal View, by Walter Pfeiffer, is published by Walter Pfeiffer Studios