Scannáin Andy: New documentary explores rich archive of images and film footage
Andrew Kelly’s archive features in a documentary on TG4.
Andrew Kelly, from Kilmacthomas, Co Waterford, was born in 1944, and there is one memory from his childhood that stands out for him today.
“I went to primary school in a place outside Dungarvan called Coolnasmear. There was a travelling guy that came around with a film projector, and we were all brought into the master’s room and this guy set up the projector and put on a film. I would have been about six years old — I cannot remember what the film was because I spent most of the time sitting facing back, looking at the projector. I was amazed by it.”
It was an experience that flicked the switch on a lifetime of taking pictures, during which Kelly has amassed a huge collection of cameras, equipment, photographs and films. His passion is featured in a new TG4 documentary, Scannáin Bhaile Andy, produced and directed by RoseAnn Foley.
When Kelly eventually got his hands on his own camera, at the age of ten, there was no stopping him, and before long, he was developing his own photographs.
“My mother had an old box camera, there was a little viewing glass on top where you looked into a mirror. It had been left out in the rain so she bought a new camera and I got that one off her and fixed it. I used to buy film with my pocket money and bring it in to a camera shop to get developed. I moved on then to developing my own black and white photos. We lived in an old farmhouse and we had a box room with no windows in it.
"I didn’t have tanks or anything like that, I had old enamel pie dishes that I would put the chemicals in, the developer and fixer. I used to have my younger brother outside counting down the time, I will never forget it, it was four and a half minutes in the developer and then as much again in the fixer. Then you could take it out in the light and wash it.”
Kelly went on to qualify as a carpenter, much sought after for his skills as a staircase builder. His work adorns houses around Ireland and beyond, including at Castlehyde, Michael Flatley’s mansion home near Fermoy, Co Cork. His skills have come in handy when repairing and restoring cameras and projectors.
“Some of the cameras I have go back to the 1880s and 1890s. The old magic lantern projectors are pre-electricity, they have oil-burner lamps inside them. I have about six or seven of those. I would have got them for €20 or €30 and restored them, you would see them on Ebay for up to €300.”
However, Kelly collects for love rather than money. He is also generous with his expertise; over the years, he has helped various historians and others in terms of restoring prints and sourcing footage.
“I have been involved with several historians and I’ve helped out several television programmes, supplying them with photographs. I don’t charge anything for them. The way I look at it, if you have a hobby and you go charging for the output of it, if you like, it is no longer a hobby, it is then a business.”
In the documentary, Kelly recalls his involvement as a projectionist with the Waterford Irish Film Group for over 20 years. They made their own film, The Chase, featuring footage of Waterford city streetscapes as well as the beautiful cliffs and coves along the Copper coast. He remembers another occasion when a spontaneous event resulted in a prize-winning photograph.
“I remember around 1973, the electricity went off in the house one night. My wife had gone across to the other side of the village to her mother. I had one of my lads here, he was around two or three, and I lit a candle. He had never seen a candle in his life and he was absolutely focused on the candle, in total amazement. I pulled out the camera and took a single shot. I entered it in the Cork Examiner photograph competition and I won it outright. The following year, they were inundated with photographs of children by candlelight.”
Kelly is conscious of preserving what are valuable records of our past for future generations. He recently helped restore and digitise the collection of well-known Fermoy photographer Frank Morgan, giving the original negatives to the Irish Film Institute. He has also been in discussions with the IFI about giving them the collection of Robert Shorthall, an amateur photographer from New Ross, Co Wexford who had a huge collection of still and live footage of trains, boats and barges from the 1930s to the 1980s.
Kelly’s collection also contains the historic and socially important work of the late Frank Rolls, aka Frank Snaps, who photographed people out and about in Waterford city, at the local dance halls such as the Olympia and at the beach in Tramore throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Kelly found the collection stored in sweet tins in a second-hand shop in Waterford. He recounts his own experience with Frank Rolls as a child, and the clever ruse he used to entice people to buy his photographs.
“I remember as a child coming up Barronstrand St in Waterford with my aunt, we were going to Woolworth’s —where Penney’s is now. This guy stood out in front of us, it was Frank Rolls, although I didn’t know that at the time…you’d hear this loud click and he would hand you a cloakroom ticket. If you took the ticket, it meant you wanted the photograph and so he would ask you to stand back and he would take the shot again. He had a gadget on the side of the camera that made the loud click and if you didn’t take the ticket he hadn’t wasted the negative. He hadn’t actually taken a picture at all,” laughs Kelly.
- Scannáin Bhaile Andy is on TG4, Wednesday, April 7, at 8.30 pm.
