John Minihan tells all about his famous Samuel Beckett photograph

John Minihan tells Ellie O’Byrne about his famous photograph of Samuel Beckett

"THE ashtray was full up and I was smoking his cigarettes. By half four the light was failing and I thought, damn it, it’s not going to happen, but at a quarter to five he said, ‘Do you want to take a photograph?’. He didn’t have to ask me twice.”

West Cork-based photographer John Minihan has told the story of how he took his iconic portrait of fellow Irishman Samuel Beckett many times, and yet he still lights up as he relays the tale, sitting forward in excitement and switching to the present tense to recount a moment he captured in a café in Paris in 1985. “His eyes leave me and his hands go to the ashtray, and I know I have it.”