Father Browne's Dublin: Photographs 1925-1950

By E E O'Donnell and Francis Browne

This collection by renowned photographer, Francis Browne SJ, portays both the photographer's vision and the city's energy as it changes during the first half of the twentieth century. Father Browne focuses on the people of Dublin, at work, at play and watching the world go by. This is a city of children, window shoppers, churchgoers, canals, bridges, trams and trains. Grand houses and tenements, middle classes and poor, industry and hospitals, all catch the photographer's eye. Father Browne's Dublin is a treasure of images, a collection of outstanding photographs, full of wisdom, humour, nostalgia, artistry, information and record. Both Dubliners and the many, many visitors to Ireland's capital city will find here a collection that brings the Dublin of the last century back to life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Messenger Publications
• Release date: Apr 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781788123778

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Introduction

Francis Mary Hegarty Browne was born in Cork, Ireland in 1880. He belonged to a prominent family in that city: his cousin (Sir Daniel Hegarty) holding the office of Lord Mayor and his uncle (Robert Browne) reigning as Bishop of the neighbouring See of Cloyne for nearly forty years.

Frank Browne went to school at the Bower Convent, Athlone; Christian Brothers College, Cork; Belvedere College, Dublin and Castleknock College in County Dublin. At the age of seventeen he went on a tour of Europe with his brother and his camera. His pictures of 1897, therefore, were the opening shots of a salvo of photography that is still reverberating more than a hundred years later.

When he returned from the continent he joined the Jesuits. His two years in the noviceship near Tullamore, County Offaly were followed by a three-year classical course in the Royal University, Dublin (now University College Dublin, UCD). He then studied philosophy for three years in Italy, near Turin. During the summer holidays he brought his camera to such places as Venice, Pompeii and Monte