After a half century, and a half-million photos, Cork photographer Denis leaves lasting impression

“At the end of the day, it’s all about people,” Denis Minihane, veteran photographer with The Echo and the Irish Examiner, told his retirement party on Wednesday.

At a gathering of colleagues and friends in the newspapers’ offices to mark the end of an eventful and multi-award-winning 47-year career during which he took an estimated half-million pictures, Mr Minihane, 65, was asked what were the most important elements of a great photograph.

“People buy the paper, people read it online, it’s all about the people really, and if you can get people in [to a picture], it definitely brings it to life,” he said.

Gráinne McGuinness, editor of The Echo, said that while Mr Minihane was a brilliant photographer, she wanted to emphasise that he had also been “an absolutely brilliant colleague”.

“Everybody who has worked with you has found you a pleasure to deal with, your warmth, your courtesy, your professionalism,” Ms McGuinness said.

“Because you’ve been so long in the company, you have seen an awful lot of us come in the door, and I know I can speak on behalf of people who have come in the door in the last 10 and even in the last 20-plus years, you have been one of the most welcoming of colleagues, showing such generosity in your time, it has just been a pleasure and an honour to work with you.” 

Karen O’Donoghue, managing director of The Echo and the Irish Examiner, said that from the moment she had begun with the company two decades earlier as a junior marketing executive, Mr Minihane had done everything he could to help her.

“You’ve just been an amazing person to work with, and it’s a privilege to be able to be able to thank you on behalf of the whole organisation,” Ms O’Donoghue said, adding that he had been “an amazing ambassador” for the group.

Tom Fitzpatrick, editor of the Irish Examiner, said it was a very poignant day, with colleagues saying “a fond farewell for now” to “a man who has been here for every one of our first days”.

“The fondness for this man is unparalleled - we’re losing a marketing tool here as much as a fine photographer,” Mr Fitzpatrick said, to laughter.

Presenting Mr Minihane with a book collecting some of his most famous photographs, Jim Coughlan, picture editor with the Examiner group, described Mr Minihane as “a total gentleman” who had left an extraordinary legacy of multi-award-winning photographs from perhaps a half-million pictures taken over his career.

“You always did it with a smile on your face. You were a total gentleman,” he said.

Tony Leen, sports editor with the Irish Examiner, who had asked Mr Minihane the most important elements of a great photograph, said a different question might be what makes a great photographer.

“I think probably two of the most important traits [are] basically just talent and personality … and it’s no secret that such talents also come with being very good with people,” he said.

“You make it very easy, Denis, to get the picture, you make the subject very easy, they’re putty in your hand, and that’s a gift, that’s not something that you manufacture, you’re just either like that as a person or you’re not.” 

A Skibbereen native, Mr Minihane was 17 when he joined the then Evening Echo and Cork Examiner in their Academy Street offices on October 18, 1976.

He had planned initially to become a journalist, earning handy pocket money writing local news reports for both the Echo and the Examiner while still in school, earning a penny a line and three pence a line for a headline, “and if the headline happened to go across three columns, you got three pence for the headline, multiplied by three”.

After his leaving certificate, Mr Minihane ended up following in the footsteps of his father, Michael, a legendary photographer, when a job came up in the paper, and he abandoned a commercial course in shorthand typing to work in the Examiner dark room.

In his early days, Mr Minihane said, he would often finish work at 11pm, and stay around chatting to colleagues, talking to engravers and compositors as the paper was being prepared for printing, getting a copy of the Cork Examiner hot off the presses and stopping by Lennox’s chipper for his supper on the way home, going to bed at 3am “with all the paper read at that stage, so I was ahead of most people with the news”.

Perhaps the most famous of Mr Minihane’s photographs was a black-and-white picture of victims of the 1985 Air India disaster, in which all 329 passengers had died.

Captured through an open window, Mr Minihane’s photograph of bodies lying in a makeshift morgue in the then Cork Regional Hospital captured some of the scale and human cost of the disaster. The picture was syndicated around the world, featuring in Life magazine.

In a career spanning almost a half a century, Mr Minihane covered countless concerts, sporting and political events, photographing presidents, pop stars, popes, acting royalty and wildlife – “I was probably the only photographer who was bitten by a penguin at Fota Wildlife Park,” he quipped.

Thanking his wife, Maeve, and their four adult children, Laura, David, Conor and Shane, Mr Minihane said he was looking forward to taking up art classes in his retirement.

Looking back over a career he had lived and loved for 47 years, he recalled an early conversation with one of the owners and shareholders of the then Cork Examiner and Evening Echo. 

“Donal Crosbie told me when I got the job I was on a six-month trial, and I’m still waiting to hear back from him,” he said.

“I will miss my large second family here but I will be keeping an eye on the publications,” Mr Minihane told colleagues. “But now it’s time for me to shutter off into the sunset.”