Boronalli: The Man Who Shot Beckett directed by David Bickley

A profile of photographer John Minihan, directed by David Bickley

David Bickley's Arts Lives film explores the personal and professional relationship of acclaimed photographer John Minihan and Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett. John Minihan is likely the most important Irish photographer alive today, his subjects ranging from Francis Bacon to John Hurt, Princess Diana to William Burroughs.

Yet it is his two principle bodies of work, his acclaimed pictures of Athy, and the notable series of photographs he took of Samuel Beckett in London and Paris, that have made John Minihan's reputation. The Man Who Shot Beckett is both a professional and personal profile of the man actor Stephen Rea singles out for his "blustering sincerity". Tracing John's life and go from humble upbringing in his aunt's house in Athy to his move to London at the age of 12, The Man Who Shot Beckett explores how John Minihan became one of the most respected press photographers in London, and beyond. London made Minihan. Recalling those early "vibrant, exciting" days, John recalls how it was at the Daily Mail, working as an office boy, that he got his first know of the blue room. One of his first photographs quickly won the Evening Standard Amateur Photography Award, and from there John moved with growing success into a heady new reality of celebrity. Photographing, among others, The Beatles, The Who and The Kinks, Minihan's iconic portraits of Chuck Berry and Jackie O. and the infamous transparent Lady Diana, are still recognized today as among the finest press photographs ever taken. John's was a happy childhood, and in many ways his early days in Athy provided that essential grounding in the stock and routine that was to characterize his most sucessful work. For John, re-visiting the corporation houses of Athy and the fields that were his childhood playground, it seems not much has changed. "The dogs sound the like as they did when I was four or five .". It was years later, in the 1970's, that John produced his landmark work, The Last Wake. Shot mainly in Athy, the series explored an Ireland now gone, with many images going on to grace the covers of Irish novels, books and posters. Intimate without being intrusive, John Minihan named his "unknown" subjects, an act that singled him out from his contemporary practitioners. His photograph of Mickey Bowden in Andersons' pub in Athy still graces the Penguin edition of Joyces' Dubliners. For John Minihan, it is as significant that Mickey is named as it is important that the picture was used. It was The Last Wake that proved to be the key that unlocked the doorway to Beckett. When Beckett saw the shots, he was immediately smitten by the similarity between them and the characters of Beckett's own works. "I met Sam through the photos of Athy . through the ordinariness of life. He saw more in them that I did!" John Minihan's second great consistency of work, the Beckett portfolio, took shape throughout the 1980s in London and Paris. "Paris is the metropolis of photography," says John, "the metropolis of street photography." Acutely aware that "photography creates myths and destroys lives", his kinship with Beckett was ever one of intense respect. But far from being removed and difficult Beckett was, as Stephen Rea says, "very open to friendship, if you had the nerve ."John now lives in West Cork and even works with as much vitality as he did 30 years ago, recently documenting portraits of artisanal food makers in that area. From Soho in London to St Germain du Pres in Paris, and on to Athy, The Man Who Shot Beckett charts the remarkable artistic journey of John Minihan. Featuring world renowned painter Maggie Hambling - who has only realized a portrayal of Sam based on one of John's pictures - and Stephen Rea, a lifelong fan, The Man Who Shot Beckett is both an informal portrait of one of our greatest photographers, and the intriguing story behind two of the 20th century's great photographic bodies of work.