Photographer extraordinaire Denis Scannell: an appreciation

Consummate professional and complete gentleman made every home he photographed a palace: his enormous archive lives on

Hold the front page: a tiny fraction of Denis Scannell's work, in their rightful home, on page one of the Irish Examiner's Property & Home pages

THE death occurred last weekend of photographer extraordinaire and utter gentleman Denis Scannell, a man who was incapable of taking a bad photograph: his lens work from his ever-present cameras graced and enhanced these Property & Home pages, and those of the Irish (and, Cork)  Examiner too on a wider front, for decades.

Apart from his family, photography was Denis’ life passion, having got his first camera at the age of 13, to document nature which he had always loved.

Denis Scannell,  Irish Examiner photographer at the front door of Peig Sayers' house on the Blasket Islands. Picture Claire Scannell

His opus spanned nature, art, architecture, Cork streets, buildings and their features, houses, commercial profiles, portraiture, the Munster property market, and other oddities.

A private archive added tens, if not hundreds of thousands more images to what Denis saw and ‘snapped’ over his lifetime in the ‘day’ job, with collections of landscapes, many taken at ‘the golden hour’ around dawn: chimney pots; old farm gates; nature; portraits and family (only Britain’s royal family was as well documented as his own children) and, later, as ‘Pops’ to his grandchildren.

Red Strand: picture Denis Scannell

Readers of the Irish Examiner will have known and admired ‘Sca’s’ work here where he captured family homes and more when they came for sale, or just deserved a show-off feature or interiors spread.

 He made everyone’s house a palace, knowing the primacy of home, and visited more properties than the average plumber or GP, and left with an impeccable record to add to his legacy.

 If he was sent to photograph a landfill site for a news story, the crafted images would have come back with scavenging seagulls artfully posed.

He was a phenomenal ambassador for the paper, which he joined in his early 20s (having previously worked in a commercial PR and marketing agency) and worked with the Examiner for 43 years. Denis retired in 2016 when he said that “photography has been my hobby and passion all my life, so it was never, really,  work”. 

A winner of multiple press awards in the past, Denis’s exceptional ‘eye’ crossed over into other spheres of his life, helping his competitive streak in golf, tennis, table tennis, darts, snooker, pool, rings, and cards: if a euro bet was laid down, he found another gear, friends and sports opponents found to their cost.

Starting in the days of black and white and darkrooms where he reigned supreme (one job was concealing the position of a football in the old lucrative ‘Spot the Ball’ competition days) he moved with ease to colour, digital, video and, in retirement, drone photography, with the company car his ‘work from home’ and office, and bags of equipment, and a laptop of visual treasures.

His work was characterised by utter professionalism, good grace, discretion, exceptional talent, and he was personally and universally described as an utter gentleman.

Denis’s passing after an illness borne with grace leaves former colleagues and friends deeply sorrowed while his family — his beloved Ethel, (nee Vallely,) adult children Claire, Alison, Kate, Peter, and four grandchildren - in grief, although they have the comfort of many thousands of extraordinary, and happy images, to go with happier memories.

Tommy Barker

Property Editor