Put yourself in the picture and bid for Minihan’s Ballydehob retreat

IF a picture tells a thousand words, then one of John Minihan’s photos of his west Cork home would do instead of a sales brochure, or editorial write up.

But, “I don’t do houses”, Minihan told his auctioneer when his Ballydehob house sale brochure was being compiled. Might as well ask his old friend Samuel Beckett to write up the brochure, in that case. Or any other of Minihan’s many living writer friends.

Photographer John Minihan has exalted contacts and contact sheets, many of them writers of the highest calibre, and he has catalogued and captured many of the most famous writers Ireland has produced, as well as other of similar calibre worldwide. A few to name check? Samuel Beckett (Minehan has produced a book of icon-status Beckett images), Seamus Heaney, John Montague, Annie Proulx, Patrick Galvin, WH Auden, John B Keane, Brian Keenan Van Morrison, and hundreds more. He is working on his latest exhibition Writing the Century. “Sam Beckett was very kind to me, he opened many gates,” Minihan acknowledges of his fellow Irishman and study.