JOHN MINIHAN PHOTOGRAPHER
Born in Dublin in 1946 and raised in Athy Co Kildare John Minihan is an Irish photographer who is credited with capturing some of the most iconic images of the 20th century.
At the age of 12 he was brought to live in London and went on to become an apprentice photographer with the Daily Mail. At the age of 15 he won an amateur photography competition and at 21 became the youngest staff photographer for the Evening Standard
For thirty years he remained in London photographing the great and the good whilst returning every year to his hometown of Athy to record the people and their daily lives. Minihan began taking photos in Athy when he was 16, these photographs are an attempt to document the lives of the ordinary people of the town in their day-to-day business and also in times of joy and sadness, notably during the wake of a woman called Katy Tyrrell. Minihan himself considers these “wake” photographs to be his most important images
In between documenting Athy on visits home, Minihan continued his career on Fleet st. which included the iconic snap of the 19-year-old Lady Diana Spencer in the garden of the nursery at which she worked, the morning sun to her back, her legs in silhouette through her skirt. Diana had just been announced as the Prince of Wales’s love interest and photographers raced to take her photo, Minihan having the fortune to turn up first. Over the years Minihan developed a close relationship with many writers and his photographs of Samuel Beckett show a particular affinity between the two men. Minihans photos of Beckett are some of his best known, one in particular is described as one of the greatest photos of the twentieth century. William S. Burrooughs once referred to Minihan as “a painless photographer”.
He is perhaps best known for his photographs of Beckett, he first expressed a desire to photograph Beckett in 1969, following Beckett’s winning of the Nobel Prize for literature, having noticed that all the available photos of Beckett were of a poor quality; ‘We were running a story but discovered there were only two very vague images of Beckett taken many years before. It was like he didn’t exist – that was the moment I decided I wanted to meet this man and take his photograph.’Minihan first encountered Beckett in 1980, while Beckett was working on a production of one of his own plays ’Endgame’ they met in the Hyde Park hotel and John showed him some of his photos of Athy to break the ice. The two met on a number of occasions over the following years, but it was not until 1985 that they met in Paris. They arranged to meet in the restaurant of the Hotel PLM, a regular haunt of Beckett. At ten to five, with the light fading, Minihan took the photo that would go on to be called by some as the photograph of the twentieth century. John Calder credited Minihan with capturing, ‘the introspective, infinitely sad gaze of a man looking into the abyss of the world’s woes’.
Publications
Photographs: Samuel Beckett (1995)
Shadows from the Pale, Portrait of an Irish Town (1996)
An Unweaving of Rainbows, Images of Irish Writers (1996).
Exhibitions
Minihan’s many exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world include
The Museum of Modern Art, Rio De Janeiro, 1984
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris 1986
The National Portrait Gallery, London 1987/8
The October Gallery, London 1990
The Guinness Hop Store, Dublin 1991
National Gallery of Ireland – Retrospective – 2026
Highest prices achieved for John Minihan works at auction
- €13,142 – Sothebys, London – 11-05-2006
- €11,682 – Sothebys, London – 11-05-2006
- €11,178 – Sothebys, London – 18-11-2008