Paul Gaffney

Paul Gaffney

Born 1979, (Navan, Ireland)
Website paulgaffneyphotography.com

Paul Gaffney holds an MFA in Photography from Ulster University and his practice-led PhD research explores different ways of experiencing and representing the landscape, and how the act of image making can both enable and disrupt a sense of flow and connection with our environment.

His work has received a number of awards including the Arts Council’s `Next Generation Award’ and Visual Arts Bursaries, the FSAS Digital Media Award, and a Strategic Projects Award from Wicklow Arts Office.

Bio & Career

Gaffney’s books have been nominated for the Photobook Award at the International Photobook Festival Kassel (2013 & 2016) and shortlisted for the European Publishers Award for Photography, and he has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions in the US, UK, the Netherlands, South Africa, Ireland, Italy, France, Spain, Australia and China.

“Gaffney’s photographs emerge out of intuition, coincidence, and an underlying longing for connection and stillness. And although it’s tempting to call them landscapes, they are created through different ways of knowing a place – ways that acknowledge the moving, feeling body, rather than the distanced and distancing eye, as the foundation of our experience.”

Eugenie Shinkle – Reader in Photography, University of Westminster

Publications

Appears in

2017, Perigee, Dublin & Dudelange: Published in association with the Centre national de l’audiovisuel (CNA), Luxembourg, ISBN 978-2-919873-29-6
2016, Stray, Dublin: self-published artist’s book
2014, 3 Jours a Tharoul, Tharoul: unique artist’s book
2013, We Make the Path by Walking, Dublin: self-published, ISBN 978-0-9926004-0-2

Awards and honours

2021, Strategic Projects Award, Wicklow Arts Office, Bray, Ireland
2018, Digital Media Award, Fire Station Artists Studios, Dublin, Ireland
2017, Deutsche Borse Prize (nominated by Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland) 2016, Next Generation Artists Award, Arts Council, Dublin, Ireland
2017, Visual Artists Bursary, Arts Council, Dublin, Ireland
2016, Prix Pictet (nominated by Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland)
2016, Photobook Award 2016, International Fotobook Festival, Beijing, China (nominated by Bertien van Manen)
2015, MACK First Book Award (nominated by Karen Downey)
2014, Travel and Training Award, Arts Council, Dublin, Ireland
2013, Photobook Award 2013, International Fotobook Festival, Kassel, Germany (nominated by Ángel Luis González)
2013, European Publishers Award for Photography (shortlisted)
2013, Johnsons Photopia Award, Format Festival, Derby, UK
2013, Human Flows, CRASSH, University of Cambridge, UK

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

2016, November – December, Perigee, Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland
2016, July, Stray, Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
2016, March – May Perigee, Centre national de l’audiovisuel, Dudelange, Luxembourg
2015, October – November, Stray, Belfast Exposed, Belfast, Northern Ireland
2014, July, We Make the Path by Walking, Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
2014, February – March, We Make the Path by Walking, Ffotogallery, Cardiff, Wales
2013, July, We Make the Path by Walking, Instituto Cervantes, Dublin, Ireland
2013, We Make the Path by Walking, Cortona on the Move Festival, Italy
2013, July, We Make the Path by Walking, Flowers Gallery, London, England

Group exhibitions

2022, Images Are All We Have, Printworks, Dublin Castle, Dublin, Ireland
2022, On the Irish Photobook, Printworks, Dublin Castle, Dublin, Ireland
2022, The Politics of Place, Photo Museum Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
2022, National Photography Collection Inaugural Exhibition, Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland
2021, Transitory, Centre Culturel de Serbie, Paris, France
2020, The Time of our Lives, Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
2019, In Living Memory, Emo Court, Co. Laois, Ireland
2019, NATURE MUSIC, Killarney House, Killarney, Ireland
2019, Press Play, Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
2018, Biennial de la Photographie Mulhouse, Mulhouse, France
2018, Flux Feelings, Cercle Cité, Luxembourg
2018, Beyond View, Belfast Exposed, Belfast, Northern Ireland
2018, Terra Nostra, Wexford County Council Offices, Wexford, Ireland
2018, J Book Show, Glucksman Gallery, Cork, Ireland
2018, The Romantic Landscape, Noorderlicht Gallery, Groningen, Netherlands
2017, Flux Feelings, La Chapelle de La Charité, Les Rencontres d’Arles, France
2017, Post-Picturesque: Photographing Ireland, Rochester Arts Centre, Rochester, MN, USA
2017, Post-Picturesque: Photographing Ireland, Perlman Teaching Museum, Carleton, MN, USA
2017, 4 Photographers, Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
2017, Photobook Phenomenon, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, Spain
2016, In Residence II, Oliver Sears Gallery, Fitzroy Square, London, England
2016, IAWATST – images from the State Art Collection – Dublin Castle, The Lab & other venues, Ireland & Northern Ireland
2016, Phototropism, The Library Project, Dublin, Ireland
2015, In Residence, Oliver Sears Gallery, Fitzroy Square, London, Ireland
2015, A Lonely Impulse of Delight (150 years of W.B.Yeats), traveling group exhibition organised by SO Fine Art to multiple venues in Ireland, China, Japan etc.
2015, Give Way, Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford, Ireland
2015, Dali International Photography Festival, Dali, China
2015, Fraction of a Second, University Of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, USA
2015, 185th RHA Annual Show, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland
2015, The Natural Collection, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, Australia
2015, Indie Photobook Library Exhibition, Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive, Melbourne, Australia
2014, Senza meta. Il libro come pensiero fotografico, Fotografia Europea Festival, Reggio Emilia, Italy
2014, In a Landscape, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Ireland
2014, 133rd RUA Annual Show (Invited Artist), Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland
2014, How One Thing Leads to Another, Houston Center for Photography, Houston, USA
2014, How One Thing Leads to Another, Cordon Potts Gallery, San Francisco, USA
2014, UU/Yale MFA Photography Exhibition, University of Ulster, Belfast, Northern Ireland
2014, F Book Show, Gallery 72, Tokyo
2014, Landscape #1, Guest Projects, London
2013, Unfolding Images, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA, USA
2013, Present Tense, South Studios, Dublin, Ireland
2013, New Talent, University of Ulster, Belfast, Northern Ireland
2013, Exposure, In Toto Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2013, New Irish Works, düo, Paris, France
2013, Human Flows, CRASSH, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England
2012, Project 30, Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland
2012, Foto8 Summershow, Host Gallery, London, England
2012, Open Now, Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland
2012, MFA Photography Interim Exhibition, Red Barn Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland
2012, Open Now, Gallery Nine, Belfast, Northern Ireland
2010, Foto8 Summershow, Host Gallery, London, England
2010, ffotoCardiff, Third Floor Gallery, Cardiff, Wales

Projects

Perigee (2015-16)

Perigee refers to the point in the moon’s orbit at which it is closest to Earth. Walking through forest landscapes by daylight, I documented my wanderings using polaroids. Later, I re-explored certain routes after nightfall, to photograph under the light of the full moon. Bathed in its soft otherworldly glow, the forest’s narrow steep valleys evoke a mysterious, psychological wilderness in what is, in reality, a highly managed man-made environment.
The project was published as a set of two photobooks with magnetic cover design which act as a metaphor for the lunar cycle and relationship between the moon and earth.

Stray (2014)

My practice-led research is concerned with how we experience landscape through movement, in a multisensorial and tactile way, rather than organising and viewing it from a separate, isolated distance, as per the rules of the Western pictorial tradition.
In particular, I am interested in exploring how the non-visual senses may be activated to develop a heightened awareness of both the body and environment, and one of these approaches has included walking and photographing in forests at night.
Stray was made in near total darkness and its sequence of images suggests a slow careful movement through a dark, enclosed space.

We Make the Path by Walking (2012)

During 2012 I walked over 3,500 kilometres with the aim of creating a body of work which would explore the idea of long-distance walking as a form of meditation and personal transformation.
My intention was to create a series of quiet, meditative images, which would explore the experience of being immersed in nature and capture the essence of the journey. The images seek to engage the viewer in this walk, and to communicate a sense of the subtle internal and psychological changes which one may undergo while negotiating the landscape.