About "Inis Oírr — The Jewel of the Aran Islands"

Michael O’Flanagan has been coming and going to Inis Oírr numerous times each year for both long and short-term stays since 1969 and he developed an interest in photography in 1970. He has been photographing the island of Inis Oírr, its development and modernisation and life on Inis Oírr since 1971. His photographic archive contains a vast collection of images of the three Aran Islands (Inis Mór, Inis Meáin and Inis Oírr) and in particular Inis Oirr – the smallest of the Aran Islands and it is possibly the largest such collection in existence.

In selecting the 272 captivating photographs for inclusion in this 256 page photobook "Inis Oírr — The Jewel of the Aran Islands", he has aimed to give its readers a comprehensive view of Inis Oírr’s captivating and spectacular landscape from the air, sea and ground; to highlight the island’s historical sites, other attractions and locations throughout the island that will be of interest to visitors to Inis Oirr, to show the island’s infrastructural developments and how Inis Oírr has been transformed and modernised since he first visited it in 1969 and to visually introduce the photobook's readers to some of Inis Oírr’s people, the island’s life and its cultural and artistic richness.

The sequence of the photographs featured in the book opens with a group of aerial views of the island running in an anti-clockwise direction from the South Sound, which separates Inis Oírr from the Clare coastline. The photobook then features a selection of landscape photographs taken from the sea on the Galway Bay side of the island, as one would view Inis Oírr while approaching it by ferryboat from either Co. Clare or Co. Galway.

Moving onto the Island, images created at ground-level show the Island’s spectacular landscape, its various visitor attractions and historical sites and daily island life. These landscape images are interspersed with photographs of islanders, visitors to the island, daily work life and a selection of sporting, cultural, musical and artistic events. The book includes a number of sets of landscape images of the island, which show the reader the transformation of the physical infrastructure and the built environment of Inis Oírr from the early 1970s to the present day.

Details on the Photobook "Inis Oírr — The Jewel of the Aran Islands"
Book Title: Inis Oírr — The Jewel of the Aran Islands
Author: Michael O'Flanagan
ISBN: 9781781178454
Publication Date: 13th October, 2023
Publisher: Mercier Press (https://www.mercierpress.ie/books/inis-oirr-the-jewel-of-the-aran-islands/)

Promotional Preview Video on "Inis Oírr — The Jewel of the Aran Islands"
View the promotional preview video produced by Mercier Press on the photobook "Inis Oírr — The Jewel of the Aran Islands".