In the summer of 1988, Suzanne Ahearne arrived in Galway from Canada with a student work permit, a backpack, and a Pentax K1000 camera.
23 years old, she fell in love with the city and its close-knit community, vibrant arts scene and bohemian charm. She spent the next year working in local cafes and taking pictures of people on the street in the course of her daily wanderings.
The Galway she captured on black-and-white film feels both familiar and distant: bustling markets, festivals, street-corner conversations, and moments of quiet amid the unhurried rhythms of ordinary life.
With warmth, humour and a sharp eye for human detail, Ahearne captures the faces and personalities that gave the Galway of the 1980s its distinctive character, preserving a moment in the social life of a city on the precipice of dramatic economic and cultural transformation.
Suzanne Ahearne’s year in Galway was the beginning of a lifelong career in storytelling. She has a Masters degree in journalism from the University of British Columbia and has worked as a photojournalist, writer, and radio and podcast producer. She lives on Vancouver Island.
A collection of hundreds of Suzanne Ahearne’s images of Galway was recently acquired by the University of Galway Archives.
