Artist Statement
MY DEBUT IN JOURNALISM

My beginnings in photo-journalism go back to 1948. I had been toying around with a folding Kodak camera, bought a couple of years before to take some souvenir photos on my flying trips while working as a Radio-Navigator for a charter air company. I was based for a while in the then international North African city of Tangier in the northwestern comer of Morocco. The pictures I took there were very insignificant.
I moved away from aviation and went to live for a while in Monaco. As it was then still a very picturesque little place, I tried to capture this with my simple camera. The photos showed a little something, but were not too inspired. A friend loaned me a better, more expensive camera with a sharper lens. Some portraits taken with this were admired and I found myself that they were quite encouraging.
This spurt me on, so I plunged into getting hold of a Retina camera which I had heard was of professional standard. As I thought then, and still do, that the best proof of one’s skill and success is to be able to sell pictures, I nosed around for something newsworthy to try my hand on.
I heard of a horse jumping contest being held in nearby Nice and decided to try my luck there. I managed to get in as I spoke English and this helped me to pass myself off as a fully fledged professional press photographer. At the show I positioned myself beside the hardened professionals who were covering the contest and began to shoot, trying to catch the most spectacular moment as the rider edged his horse over the very difficult obstacles. I of course concentrated on trying to get good pictures of the Irish and English competitors. Riding for the Irish team was Capt. Turbridy, an excellent horseman who had a terrific horse. lt was not too difficult for me to get some good shots of Capt. Turbridy and his horse and it seemed to me a very good omen that on my first professional outing the Irish won.
The pictures were published in the IRISH INDEPENDENT and at that moment I began to take my work as a photographer seriously. I bought some books about photography. Over in Nice I was able to get POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY, MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY and CAMERA, magazines still published nowadays. I followed all the "how to do it" articles and transformed the tiny kitchen of a kindly Monegasque friend into a darkroom.

 

 

Edward Quinn was born 1920 in Dublin. He lived with his parents and brother at Phibsboro Avenue. His father worked as cooper at the Guinness Company.
Edward Quinn started out making his living as a musician and during World War II played with a small band in Belfast. He then joined the RAF in England and became a radio navigator.
When the war was over he continnued in aviation, flying charter planes in Europe and Africa and later taking part in the Berlin airlift during the 1948 Soviet blockade.
On one of the flights he met his future wife.When he went to Monte Carlo where she lived, he realized that he could make a living on the Riviera, photographing all the personalities and stars who liked to come to this part of the world.
He learned all he could about photography from books and photo magazines, mostly American ones. He contacted news agencies and magazines and soon worked for magazines and newspapers all over the world.
He photographed famous personalities, royalties, film stars, writers, sport champions etc. but he preferred to work with the painters.
Edward Quinn photographed Pablo Picasso for the first time in 1951 at a ceramic exhibition. This meeting was of great importance for him. He became a friend of the painter and was able to visit and photograph him for more than 20 years in his home with his family and at work.
Quinn made two films and several important books about Picasso.
He also made a book about Max Ernst, Graham Sutherland, Francis Bacon,
and a few years ago a book about Georg Baselitz.
Other books about personalities and stars were RIVIERA COCKTAIL, A COTE D’AZUR ALBUM, STARS, STARS, STARS...
In the sixties Edward Quinn spent many months in Dublin rambling around and trying to find views, aspects and scenes of Dublin life which would express the spirit of Joyce’s prose. He published these photographs in a book called James Joyce’s DubliN.
The cinema documentary RIVIERA COCKTAIL (2006, © NZZ Film 2006) encompasses an entire age, tracing the path followed by Edward Quinn from his early pin-up photography to his unconventional portrayal of all the great stars and, finally to his relationships as a photographer with Pablo Picasso and Georg Baselitz.
There have been many exhibitions of his photographs at museums and galleries.
Quinn died 1997. His nephew Wolfgang and his wife Ursula Frei take care of the extensive photo archive since 2006.