Kevin O’Farrell: 'The boatyard became a natural place for me to photograph'
Kevin O'Farrell and two of his photographs of Hegarty's Boatyard in Skibbereen currently on display at Uillinn.
It was almost inevitable that Kevin O’Farrell would fall under the spell of Hegarty’s Boatyard in Skibbereen, Co Cork, the last business in the country dedicated to building large-scale wooden boats. A photographer by trade, he also works as a furniture restorer and has a keen interest in watersports.
“I was always into kayaking and canoeing and activities like that,” he says. “When I moved to West Cork, I got into sailing. I bought an old wooden boat, and brought it to Hegarty’s to be restored. And then, as I got to know Liam and John Hegarty, the boatyard became a natural place for me to photograph.”
O’Farrell’s fascination with the Hegartys’ work as boat builders has resulted in two books of photographs and the exhibition, Hegarty’s Boatyard: Last Traditional Wooden Boatyard in Ireland, now showing at Uillinn, the West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen.
“Having done so much woodwork myself, I can appreciate the qualities involved in what they do,” says O’Farrell. “But boat-building is completely different to furniture restoration. There’s not a single straight piece of wood in a boat for a start. It’s all concave and convex curves. There’s bends and bevels and angles of every description. In woodworking terms, I think it’s the highest kind of craft. There’s a set of processes rather than a formula. You start with the keel, and you build up the skeleton of the frame, then you do the planking and then the beams go in for the deck and the whole thing comes together over a period of time. It’s all manual labour, so it’s a slow process.”
As O’Farrell sees it, the decline in traditional boat-building follows inevitably from that of the fishing industry all around the coast. “It’s hard to get skilled people to do this kind of work any more,” he says. “Another issue these days is getting timber. They used to buy it in from North America, but now they import it from Germany. There are problems sourcing bronze fittings, you just can’t get them in Ireland anymore, so they have to be imported too.
"There are plenty of small boat-builders in Ireland, making good museum quality little sailing boats. But, apart from the Hegartys, there’s no one else in the country building boats up to 70/80 feet. No one else has the facilities to do that any more. In the UK, the Heritage Crafts Association have put traditional wooden boat building on the endangered crafts list, even though there’s more support for the industry there.”
O’Farrell grew up in the UK, but his parents came from Banagher and Birr in Co Offaly, and he always considered Ireland home. He moved over in 1980, living on Heir Island for fifteen years before eventually moving to a house he describes as being halfway between Skibbereen and Ballydehob.
“Hegarty’s is close by, so I can pop in and out of the boatyard any time I want,” he says. “Liam and John have three other staff, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them tell anyone what to do. They all know instinctively what needs doing and they just get on with it. The atmosphere’s easy-going; people drop in for a chat all the time, and there’s a great sense of humour and fun.”
Over the years, O’Farrell has survived by working as a sailing and outdoors activities instructor, as well as a furniture restorer. He admits to having little interest in commercial photography, preferring to focus on projects that interest him personally.
“David Hurn was a great influence. He set up the college in Newport in South Wales where I studied documentary photography for two years. David is in his mid-80s now, but he’s still working and his photographs are absolutely stunning. His teaching would be the foundation of everything I’ve done really.”
He regrets that there is less interest in teaching the craft of photography in contemporary education. “People are doing degrees in photography now,” he says. “It’s become more conceptual, and the written word is becoming more important than the images. You’ll have a picture on the wall, with a short thesis beside it explaining what it’s all about. To me, that’s sort of going backwards.”
For all his fascination with traditional boat-building, he has welcomed advances in technology in his own profession. “Analogue or digital photography is the same process in the end,” he says. “You still look through the viewfinder, you still decide when you press or don’t press the button. The magic of digital is that you can have colour and black-and-white in the same camera. Most of the photographs in this show were taken in near-darkness, but the ISO settings on the camera are so good that you’d never think it.”
- Hegartys Boatyard: Last Traditional Wooden Boatyard in Ireland runs at Uillinn, the West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen until June 10
