The Monastery

Aswan, Egypt, Dec 2005: After exploring some ancient tombs on the westbank of the Nile (featured here)- we decided to walk across the open desert to the ruined 7th century monastery of St. Simeon. It didn’t look far, but in the heat and harsh enviroment of the desert, it proved to be a bit more […]

Tokaora

Taranaki, NZ, September 2012: Unlike all the other abandoned schools I’ve photographed, this one has a happy ending… Tokaora school- which has been empty for at least a decade- now has new pupils. A nearby school had to move premises, so have given this little country school a new lease of life…

The Hejaz Railway – part 1

Syria, November 2005: When I learnt that the Hejaz Railway was actually still operational, I knew I had to ride it. I’d always admired David Lean’s classic 1962 film “Lawrence of Arabia”-and to actually ride the rails that T.E.Lawrence and his band of Arab rebels had so successfully attacked and destroyed- well it just had to […]

Incinerate

Wellington, NZ, yesterday: This former animal testing station lies broken and abandoned after twenty odd years. Theres few clues left as to what experiments went on here- they’ve disappeared like the unfortunate animal test subjects destroyed in the incinerators.

THB

Empire State

New York, February 2004: On my way back to Dublin, I stopped in New York… There had been a blizzard but the Empire State beckoned… Completed in 1931 in distinctive Art Deco style- its roof height at 381 meters (with antenna included 443.2m high)- it’s still one of the highest buildings on the planet- at number […]

Eye Contact

March, NZ, 2013: An excerpt by renowned New Zealand Art/Photography reviewer Peter Ireland, on my latest exhibition Stilled Life. Photography’s documentary tradition that Cunningham’s images add to has never been very fashionable in terms of art collecting, for pretty obvious reasons. Why tolerate a stone in your shoe when you can simply buy another pair? Documentary […]

In Gaol

Mount Crawford Prison, Wellington, NZ, Nov 2012: Mount Crawford (or Wellington prison) was closed in mid November 2012 after 85 years of operation. The jail on Miramar Peninsula was built by prisoners themselves in 1927, using concrete blocks made with sand from Wellington’s South Coast. The weekend after the closure, the Department of Corrections opened […]

Undisclosed #4

Wellington, New Zealand, Nov 2012.