End frame: Cape Light – Joel Meyerowitz

Norman McCloskey

Norman McCloskey has been photographing the landscape of Ireland, in particular, the south-west since 1992. Although he has travelled all over the world, it is the Irish landscape that he has a deep-rooted connection to and a passion for working in. Having studied photography and worked in the editorial side of the industry for 18 years, he opened his gallery in Kenmare in 2015 which has been a great success.  His work now forms part of private collections all over the world and has a growing list of commercial and private commissioning clients.

normanmccloskey.com

I have been a photographer for over 28 years, more than half my life, and during that time, I have made thousands of images and undoubtedly viewed hundreds of thousands more. We are all exposed to a massive amount of photography, growing at an exponential rate, but how many of these images ever really stick with us? How many have the profound effect that the artist probably hoped for? How many times have you viewed an image that changed your life?

Granted many of us can point to images or photographers that inspired us at the beginning, picking up an Ansel Adams book or seeing a spread about a photographer in a magazine. I began my photographic journey in a very different space, well before the dawn of the internet and living in a rural town where the library didn't have a single book on photography. I began making landscape images without anything to reference them to. It was at least a year into it before I was gifted an Ansel Adams book that filled me with awe and wonder but also slightly depressed me as I reckoned, I would never be this good... I was right!