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Gerry’s picturesSTANDING on a hillside

overlooking MachuPicchu was a bittersweet

moment for Gerry Andrews.His wife June had recently

passed away, he sold hisprinting company which he hadworked hard to build up “fromground zero” for two decadesand was facing a metaphoricalcrossroads in life.

His life as it had known itwas over and a new one wassuddenly thrust upon him.

Yet, slung over his shoulderwas a camera, and as it wasin the beginning, he refoundthis old love and ultimately hissaving grace.

His only son Paul hadtravelled to Peru to view thesite of this ancient civilisation,and encouraged his dad to headoff too, to help himself come toterms with his loss.

The death of June, his wifeof 29 years from BallinacurraGardens, from cancer in 2004would lead him to re-evaluatehis life and return to what hereally enjoyed.

And so he sold his company– Euroscreen Ltd, which latermerged with Brookfield andbecame Ebrook – one of thebiggest printing companiesin the country, with 110employees.

Without her, he said,his “heart went out of thebusiness”. People told himthat the timing of the sale was“perfect”, but he believes itwas just fortuitous that he soldwhen he did.

”I didn’t see any purpose inhaving it any more after mywife died. It was very mucha joint effort. While I was theperson who built the business,without June’s support Iwouldn’t have been able to doanything. So therefore therewas something missing, it justdidn’t seem to make sense anymore.”

A plane ride to SouthAmerica would later help putsome of the missing piecesback together, but he nearlydidn’t go.

“I really needed to get myhead together because I wasstruggling quite badly at thattime.”

While he was boarding theplane his mother-in-law, whom

he was very close to, was alsodying from cancer and hecontemplated not going. “Itwas an emotional time,” hesays, somewhat understatedly.

His mixed feelings will nodoubt strike a chord with manywho have loved and lost, andare trying to love life again.

“I liked being there, but I feltguilty because for the first time

in a long time I actually startedto enjoy something.”

It is often said that great workis born of terrible tragedies,but some of Gerry’s moststaggeringly beautiful imageswere taken decades before this,right here in Limerick wherehe grew up.

A native of Wolfe ToneStreet he started work in theLeader Leader’s lithographicdepartment in 1970, and laterbecame works (or production)manager.

Art was always in his genes,even though he joked he“couldn’t paint the door.”

His father Phil was awatercolour painter andcurator of Limerick art gallery,and one of his four sisters isBrenda Andrews, the well-known artist. The subject wasconsequently an importanttopic within the familyhousehold, but Gerry felt hejust couldn’t compete.

“Photography was neverdeemed to be an art form inour house; it was a mechanicalmeans of capturing an image.My father would have seen itas an interesting hobby.”

All the while in the Leaderhe was learning photographyin a “DIY way” through theLimerick Camera Club andunder Billy Butler, head ofthe lithographic departmentand father of current Leaderphotographer Adrian Butler.

“It has been a work inprogress, and a learning-on-the-job experience which isprobably the best way,” he said.

An old woman walks along Nicholas Street, hunched and bedraggled

Gerry also captured what are believed to be the only pictures of theModel School fire in 1977, taken from wall of the army barracks

Men at work: fire fighters tackle a huge blaze at William Street in the1970s. The damage to Newsom’s is all too clear in Gerry Andrews’ vividpicture. He was on the scene quickly

Derelict buildings surround St John’s Cathedral in 1977

A man carries a wheelbarrow at Mount St Lawrence cemetery

A young boy, looking a bit lost, standing outside a doorway on Nicholas Street. The graffiti in the background reads ‘Limerick Bootboys’

Another of the stunning pictures taken by Gerry Andrews depicts ayoung boy at the Milk Market

Two young boys peer into a derelict building in Rhebogue

Gerry Andrews, 58, a native of Wolfe Tone Street in the city and formerly on the staffof the Limerick Leader, has revealed these iconic images of Limerick for the first time

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Occasionally this newspaperran photos he took, but it wasjust because he “happenedto be in the right place at theright time, like the WilliamStreet fire” when the paperdedicated a full page feature tohis work.

After 21 years he made thedifficult decision to leave theLeader and break out on hisown nationally. And this wasin an era when people had a jobfor life, from the cradle to thegrave. “Feet first,” he laughs.“It was the only way to leave.One of the toughest decisions Imade in my life was leaving theLimerick Leader.”

In any case, there was a vastdisparity at that time of theimages published in the Leader(“people at social functions andin their Sunday best”), and thepeople Gerry really wanted tocapture.

He was more concernedwith a social documentarystyle of photography, capturingpeople “in their environment,understanding how theylive, how they deal with life’schallenges and listening totheir stories.

“It just puts everything intocontext,” he says.

The Milk Market would behis first stomping ground,holding up a lens to peoplewith faces lined with misery,despair and weighed down bythe economic climate of the70s and 80s. “They were thegrand-children of people bornin the Famine. You can see it in

their faces. We hadn’t movedon much from the 1900s up tothe 1970s.”

Yet his memories of themarket are incongruous withthe “affluence” of the newmodern tented structure.

He remembers one of hisfirst visits of the market,when a trader with “enormoushands” snapped the neck of aturkey for his mother Bridget,and said “God you drive a hardbargain missus.”

He remembers the struggleof trying to carry the turkeyall the way home, and a manon a bike shouting ‘What didthat poor turkey ever do to

your son?’ He remembers hisfather’s remark when theyreturned, commenting that theturkey looked like it had gone15 rounds with Cassius Clay.

Years later he would returnwith his camera to study thosepeople who moved throughthe fair. His father called it the‘university of life’ and he foundhe learned a lot by studying‘people with little money, butwith character and principlesin abundance.’

“Now, as I look at thoseimages from the 70s, thememories come flooding back.I can close my eyes and hear

the sounds of Christmas andI remember the magic of theLimerick Milk Market andthe special people that I wasprivileged to meet there.

“It’s all changed now. Thebuzz is there, the laughterthe same, but the sounds arepunctuated by people speakinglanguages and selling productsthat were unimaginable in the70s.”

Hundreds of those black andwhite images are now availableto view on his new website(gerryandrews.com) and forthe first time this newspaperhas unearthed this gems,which have never been seen or

published before.“By and large none of

those photos, particularly ofthe market place, have everbeen published. There’s ahuge interest in them, andI’m quite surprised by theamount of interest in them.It’s nice looking back on themnow knowing there’s no otherphotographic records of thoseevents,” he said.

It says something that anexhibition entirely dedicatedto his images of Limerick willbe held in Dublin next year.

This Tuesday night he wasalso honoured at a reception

in Dublin by the AIPF, wherehe took first and second prizeunder the national portrait ofthe year award for his imagesof women in Cambodia andLimerick, and colour portraitof the year award for his shotof tribesmen in the Omo Valleyin Ethiopia. He also scoopedthe overall award for print ofthe year.

It has been an excitingjourney, taking his imagesfrom “an audience of one” toacclaim and appreciation farand wide.

Local people are also gettingin touch online to say that theyrecognise their family in hispictures, and as many imagesare without captions, slowlybut surely “all the pieces of thepuzzle are coming together.”

His website has sparkedinterest from around the globe,and received the attention ofthe RTE programmes ‘CapitalD’ and ‘Nationwide’.

Right now he is planning atrip to Cuba in November, andhopes to travel to Mali andGhana in Africa next year.

A book is also in the offing,displaying images fromLimerick, as well as his travelstaking in hotspots around theworld from Ethiopia to Nepal.“I’m ticking off places in theworld I’ve always had aninterest in,” he enthused.

Travel has brought a newzest for life, even if it meansbeing in some tricky situations,including his near encounterof a fatal kind in Ethiopia with

a hippo who fancied him fordinner.

There, he spent three weekswith the tribes down in theOmo Valley, where conditionswere primitive.

“I lived with people who 15years previously didn’t realisethey were Ethiopians, they justfelt they belonged to their owntribe.

“It was quite amazing, itwas as if I was moving back100 years, where there wereno roads. The only display ofmodernity was that people nolonger had bows and arrows,they had Kalashnikov guns. Iloved every minute of it.”

LivinginRathmichael,countyDublin, he is also adjudicateson the Employment AppealsTribunal, is director of thePrinting Packaging Forum andpresident of the Irish PrintingFederation.

Now, the wheel has turnedfull circle.

Just as June encouragedhim to set up his own company,his son pushed him to get backinto photography.

The technical side of the craftdaunted him after all theseyears, but his family boughthim “an expensive piece ofkit”, set up his website and hiswas left with no choice.

Nor is he looking back.“I just took to it like a duck

to water.”

n See next week’s LimerickLeader for more of Gerry Andrews‘pictures

A local lady who was a regular at the Milk Market and garnered thenickname ‘Old Moll’. It won a special portrait award this week

A garda, with rain dribbling from his nose, pictured on O’ConnellStreet as he was stopped at the traffic lights at Todds

Poetry in motion: The late rugby player Johnny Moroney caught inaction by Gerry Andrews. The out-half played for UCD, London Irish,Garryowen, Munster and Ireland

The Bargain Hunter: an elderlylady shops at the Milk Market

Good smoke: a gentlemantaking a puff of his pipe

Giddy-up! A young man ridingat the market

A very different scene fromthe Milk Market of today

‘The noise of turkeys, feathers flying, as theymet their end at the hands of their execu-tioners. The market was a magic place to be”

A young boy guards his dogs and hens on Nicholas Street

Down and out in the city: the McCarthy brothers on Nicholas Street

Another scene from the Milk Market shows a crowd waiting acrossfrom the market on Cornmarket Row

‘Gabriel’, a well-known local character at the time, drinking in analleyway off William Street is eyed by two children passing by

Joe Doran, who lived here with his wife Mary, just beyond Southill. Itwas taken on Christmas Eve, and ran with a Limerick Leader story

tell a unique story

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Iconicphotosunveiled

IT TOOK 40 years for the floodgatesto open, and now after all this timephotographer Gerry Andrews hasunleashed a deluge of memories forLimerick people scattered across theworld.

For the first time photos by thisaward-winning photographer werepublished across two pages in thissection last week.

Many of them were never seenbefore, and had just “an audience ofone” - Gerry himself.

But now he has shared thesehistorical gems with a much wideraudience, who simply can’t get enoughof his work.

“I am just amazed and astounded bythe response,” the 58 year-old native ofWolfe Tone Street told this newspaper.

“So far I’ve had 30 emails alone andcalls from people about the picturesand traffic to my website has gone upenormously,” he said.

A story about his remarkable imageson this website has had nearly 1,000hits in just a few days, and led to callsfor the images to have a permanentpresence in Limerick.

Dr Hugh Maguire, director of theHunt Museum, is one who is eagerto bring them to Limerick for anexhibition, and described his work as“wonderful and very striking.”

Tom Ring, a native of Athlacca incounty Limerick, who now lives in thewest midlands in England, called ouroffices to say about the pictures: “Gosh,they’re wonderful”.

A photo of the late rugby playerJohnny Moroney sparked his memoriesabout meeting him circa 1970 when heplayed for the London Irish againstMoseley.

The 92 year-old moved to England in1943, and has been getting the Leaderdelivered to his door for many of thoseyears.

The images also caught the eyeof Cha Haran, a resident in Spain’sCosta del Sol, who was a neighbour ofGerry’s many years ago and wanted usto congratulate him on his “excellentwork”. “It is a fantastic collectionand really a great work of art,” said

Mr Haran, from Barrack Hill, and amember of the famously successfulLimerick band from the 60s, Granny’sIntentions, who will be returning to theBelltable again this October.

For others, opening these pages lastweek took readers by storm when theysaw their younger selves in print.

As many of Gerry’s photographs arewithout captions, his work has provedto be something of a jigsaw puzzle, andslowly but surely he is putting “all thepieces back together.”

A man pictured last week with awheelbarrow in Mount St Lawrencecemetery has been identified asChristopher Lahiff, and a two-year-oldunnamed boy, pictured with the graffiti‘Limerick bootboys’ in the background,is said to be Danny Sheehan, whosewife in Newcastle West got in touchwith Gerry.

The famous ‘Old Moll’, a regularcharacter at the Milk Market, hasbeen identified as Mary White fromClondrinagh.

Gerry’s iconic picture of her won aprestigious award from the IAPF lastweek.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw her

in the paper,” said Linda Gleeson fromClondrinagh, now living in Cratloe.

“She used to be my neighbour andoften went to the Milk Market withmy grandmother and went backout on the bus. The pictures areabsolutely fabulous.” Her father Tomalso explained that Mary, who nevermarried and passed away in her 90s,lived in a property of his in Clondrinaghwith her brother Joe, also deceased.

A real character, who carried a stickeverywhere with her, and could drink abottle of whiskey a day, she passed awaysome 30 years ago and it’s believed shehas no surviving relatives.

The photo on the front page of thissection captures the fire at EugeneMcGovern’s menswear store onWilliam Street in the 1970s, with a staffmember running out the door with amannequin.

The store was later taken over byEugene’s son Dermot, but sadly after49 years in business it closed its doorsearlier this year.

Gerry recalled that he was the onlyphotographer at the scene at the fire,and the Leader dedicated a full page tohis pictures.

However, as he was not aphotographer at this newspaper -instead employed in another Leaderdepartment - his byline did not appearon the pictures.

He remembered the “intensity”of the fire and taking pictures fromthe rooftop of Newsom’s. “There wascompletely free access to the scene;you wouldn’t have that now,” he said.

The front page photo of last week’s

Leader2 section also came as asurprise for Donegal resident DavidGeoghegan, a past pupil of the ModelSchool, O’Connell Avenue. By chancehe was in Limerick last weekend, whenhis sister showed him the paper.

He was one of eight boys pictured inthe photo, looking on as flames engulfedthe school, along with his brother John,who passed away in 1990. He believeshe was in second class when the picturewas published.

Gerry recalled that when he arrivedat the scene the boys were shouting:“Let it burn! Let it burn!”

It has been suggested that RTEcorrespondent Joe Little and two of hisbrothers are also in that picture, alongwith Tim Duggan of the local insurancefirm on O’Curry Street.

The photos also captured the eye ofpoet Brian Slattery, who retired fromthe Limerick Fire Service after 30 yearsand whose work is published under hismother’s maiden name, Blaney.

He said he “marvelled at what he hadcaptured” and felt compelled a pen apoem in response to his work.

It reads, in part: “A lifetime, still,capturing stills of lifetimes silent,introverted glances, snapped inwindows, frames unnoticed within.”

And after the “pensive, inaudibleclicks” of the camera, and the decay ofthe body, in time “all that remains” arethese photographs.

- If you recognise anyone in thesepictures or in last week’s feature pleasecontact 061 214502, or leave a commenton www.gerryandrews.com

Another wonderful image taken by Gerry Andrews of studious looking men in the Milk Market

Gerry Andrews, above, returnedto photography after selling hisprinting company of 20 years

Read my lips: A man projects his false teeth as he surveys the activities at the Milk Market

A young girl with sorrowful, piercing eyes is pictured at the MilkMarket

Two unnamed men enjoy a conversation at Limerick’s premier market place

Waiting at the station: A couple wait at Limerick’s Colbert Station in the city with their bag of shopping,while another man catches forty winks

Finger licking good: A lady licks her lips - and nearly touches her nose - after enjoying a treat in theLimerick Milk Market