A commercial job photographing furniture made from Valentia Island slate kickstarted a love affair between Fionn McCann and the Kerry mountains.
Fionn McCann’s studio in Dublin is warm, unhurried and stunning. When I visited to interview him about his forthcoming exhibition, I was struck by how at ease he seemed, not the intensity of someone with a major show opening at the Royal Hibernian Academy in just a few weeks, but the calm of an artist who has spent years on his project. The conversation flowed naturally with the help of the comfort of being in one’s home and the shared appreciation of his work.
Although the ease contradicts the demands of his work at the quarry, McCann used a large-format film camera, the kind that requires a tripod, a black hood over the head, and precision. There is no ease. There are no second chances.
This is the work behind Deconstructing a Mountain, the exhibition opening September 11 at Ashford Gallery, Royal Hibernian Academy. The project has developed over several years of photographing the slate quarry at Geokun Mountain on Valentia Island, County Kerry, a site where geological time and contemporary industrial extraction operate side by side, shaping the landscape.
McCann arrived on Valentia Island with a straightforward commercial job: photograph furniture made from slate quarry offcuts. It was meant to be brief. Instead, he fell in love with the place. “There was just something unique about this quarry,” he explained. “It wasn’t open; it was dug into the mountain, so it goes way back into the mountainside, and where it was situated on an island off the west coast of Ireland, next to America really, the very edge of Europe.”
The location mattered, but so did the people running it. When I asked what made the quarry different from the others, McCann stressed that the quarry owner was also interested in photography, a contrast to some other large quarries that may not understand the intent of photography. The openness created conditions for genuine engagement rather than extraction. After finishing the commercial work, McCann stayed longer, photographing on his own terms. Back in Dublin, he reviewed the film he shot. “There’s really something in this. I want to explore it further,” he decided.
What followed required much commitment. McCann described the logistics: an extended trip requiring 3-5 days on the island that takes a full day to reach. Carrying around all the hefty equipment and had the patience to get the perfect shot.
McCann’s background in archaeology shapes how he sees the quarry, a perspective he articulated clearly in our conversation. He approaches it as a layered structure in constant use rather than a historical remnant. The mountain contains overlapping histories: ancient geological formation (the rock is approximately 400 million years old, formed from a riverbed), nineteenth-century industrial development, and its present-day continuation as a working site.
These layers are not sequential, McCann emphasised. They are concurrent. The quarry functions simultaneously as a geological formation, an industrial resource, a workplace, and a cultural archive. Rather than documenting change as a rupture, the transformation from nature to an industrialised landscape, McCann’s photographs attend to the sustained practice of extraction and transformation, where human activity is embedded within much longer material histories.
Central to the work, he told me, is the presence of quarry labour. Many of the workers are from Lithuania, and McCann described how their presence situates this remote Irish site within broader European patterns of migration, mobility, and industrial labour. The quarry becomes a point of intersection between local landscape and transnational workforces, between deep geological time and contemporary economic structures. McCann eats with the workers in the canteen, learns their names, gets to know them. Building genuine relationships, something he committed to throughout his time on the island.
The technical constraints of large-format film force extraordinary intentionality. Before capturing the photo, McCann must know precisely what he intends to capture. He has perhaps 3-4 minutes to position a subject, to move them, to get the right natural lighting. The concentration required is immense: light readings, camera settings, movements, interaction, all happening simultaneously.
When asked about the physical demands, McCann was candid about the toll. “It becomes physically exhausting because you’re hiking all this equipment around with you, and then it’s just intense, intense, intense,” he said. In June, working in 31°C heat with a black hood over his head, he couldn’t see through his sweat. Yet when I pressed further on digital photography rather than film, he was adamant about the value of his chosen method. The physical intensity, he explained, is inseparable from the work’s integrity. “It makes you really kind of focus on what it is you are going to do… much more fulfilling”
The slowness demands that he genuinely examine whether something is working. If it isn’t, he stops, reorients, reconsiders. When he described his philosophy, McCann drew a sharp contrast with contemporary practice: “Everything’s much slower, so you really have to think about it. It’s a very different approach to the scatter-gun digital approach, just taking something and hoping something will come out.”
All of this happens in black and white. McCann tested the medium on this project and knew immediately it was right. “Black and white emphasises shape, form, tonality, and depth,” he explained. Colour too easily provides distraction. Without it, the viewer must focus more closely; interpretation is more subjective.
Many of the photographs are portraits of quarry workers. McCann articulated a philosophy of portraiture that I found compelling: he understands portraiture not as the photographer capturing a passive subject, but as an active collaboration between two people engaged in a genuine relationship. The visible, ritualistic process of large-format photography, the tripod, the hood, the careful adjustments, intrigues workers in ways a quick digital camera or phone does not. He explains what he’s attempting, why he’s asking them to do unusual things. People, he found, are generally willing to participate once they understand the intent is sincere.
There was one exception that McCann recounted with particular care. A mother called him in fury after discovering he had photographed her 14-year-old son without explicit prior consent from her. Even though he had gotten the consent of the boy as well as the consent of his father, who was there at the quarry. McCann listened, explained his credentials and professional practice. He offered to process the film, send a print, and let her decide whether to grant permission. Three weeks later, she called back. “This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said. She gave full permission to use the image.
That transformation demonstrated something essential about the work that McCann clearly feels deeply about: its capacity to reveal dignity and beauty that people sometimes cannot see in themselves. McCann brings 10×8 prints to the workers after photographing them. The responses have been uniformly positive. He feels a deep responsibility toward those he portrays, knowing that he is not simply documenting likenesses but representing them, shaping how they will be seen.
When I asked about the curation process, McCann described an unsparing approach to refinement. From approximately 800 photographs shot over 3 years, he has distilled the project to around 240 images. The exhibition at the RHA presents just 17.
A separate artist book sequences 40 images into a different narrative. Most images previously shown on his website will not appear in the final exhibition. The process of refinement has been relentless, a testament to his commitment to presenting only work that meets his exacting standards.
Deconstructing a Mountain engages with extraction not as simple disturbance but as ongoing entanglement. At a time when questions of extraction, environmental responsibility, labour, and land use are increasingly urgent, the work examines what it means to live with landscapes that are continuously worked. The photographs resist a clear separation between nature and industry, instead presenting a site where both are inseparably entangled, a vision McCann has developed and refined through years of patient, deliberate engagement with the place and the people within it.
The mountain persists. The workers move through it. The stone continues its transformation. And McCann’s photographs, made with extraordinary deliberation and technical precision, attend to these concurrent realities: geological time, human labour, migration, extraction, and the enduring presence of those who work within these layered landscapes.
Words: Wan Ting Coco Ma
The exhibition opens on September 11th at the Ashford Gallery, Royal Hibernian Academy, 15 Ely Place, Dublin, D02 A213.
