From the Munster Express, March 2008
MY EYE – Exhibition of Photography
A Special photo exhibition by a Tramore woman was launched last Friday.
Mary from Priest Road in Tramore was educated in Stella Maris, Tramore, University College Cork and Trinity College Dublin. Sister of solicitor Danny Morrissey, her sister in law, Edel Morrissey was the guest speaker and introduced her. Mary normally works as a Director of Psychology with the Health Service Executive. She lives in Dublin and is a member of the Contemporary Irish Arts Society (C.I.A.S.) and she is passionate about photography. Many Tramore scenes are there, as well as Inisturk, and other parts of the West, the Caribbean Virgin islands of St Vincent in the Grenadines, France and Boston USA.
About this exhibition – My Eye
Mary has had a lifelong interest in photography, and only started taking photographs seriously three years ago, when she acquired a digital camera. She has taken about 4,000 photographs in that time. – Many of them are in her native Tramore. Some of these are in this exhibition. She is tutored privately by a Dutch architectural photographer, who encouraged her to go for something different and detailed. Her teacher speaking to a very attended gathering of friends from Tramore and Dublin noted that it is important to talk to people when you take a photo and get them to relax, too many pictures of people in stiff positions, where they are uncomfortable before a camera. Her high standard was praised as an amateur.
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Coast Guard Station,
Love Lane, Tramore
Friday 22nd Feb to
Thursday 6th March 08
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Mary has mastered this and she said derives great pleasure from taking photos and gets people to express themselves in her photographs. She travels extensively both for work and pleasure, always accompanied by her camera, now digital, using much thought, showing great insight.
Wide Interests
John Bowen, Chairman of Bowen Construction in Cork but originally from Waterford is a lifelong friend of Mary and was another guest speaker, he joked on Mary’s wide interests and travel. He liked the Caribbean scenes, which reminded him of a recent visit to that region. Inisturk was another area that impressed him. She had a hidden and rare talent, added John, who delighted the audience in his own way with some fine personal stories. Mary mixes easily with people and establishes a quick rapport with them added her tutor. The resulting photographs show relaxed people comfortable with having their photographs taken. Her training as a psychologist stands her in good stead, as she seems to see beyond the scene in front of her. This exhibition contains only some of the best of many photos Mary has taken over the years. It is worth spending some time looking at the photographs and seeing the angles and thoughts behind them, which is what makes every one of them special.
A final speaker at the event was Brian McClean from Dublin, who recalled the early days back in the seventies in Tramore, when he lived there, going to the Morrissey’s farm as part of the meal house gang on the way home from school and he was delighted with hr success and the use of local scenes in Tramore. They were great memories.
Edel Morrissey praised the venue, which the local Chamber of Commerce use and which houses now many good exhibitions and praised the current one and Mary for all her work.
Mary travelled to Tramore for the event giving a little boost to the town.