Framing Irish History - The Sean Sexton Collection

I collect photographs of Ireland, particularly historical ones, and

have been collecting them since 1973.

There's about 22,500 to 23,000 photographs.

Sean has that eye, he's not following the lead of institutions

who are collecting photographs.

He's very much a lone wolf like that.

Thank God he's rescued it all.

And I don't think people really recognize how important it is.

At the heart of everything he has pursued, is his passion for Ireland,

for Irish history, Irish culture, politics, the people, the

landscape, all of it.

I hope this collection does end up in the right place.

I bought this at Sotheby's in Bond Street about 25 years ago, I think I

paid around 2,000 for it.

Some of the most beautiful photographs ever taken.

And mysterious and beautiful.

Taken in Cork, late 1850s, early 1860s, I'd say some of the earliest

photographs taken there.

Apart from portraits that is.

Some of these people wouldn't even know what the camera was.

And obviously it needs an awful lot of research on, I'd love to know who

the photographer is.

But it wouldn't be that difficult.

There is a register of photographers in Britain and in Ireland.

Research, research, take it to the department in university, 10 years maybe.

The collection focuses particularly from 1840 to 1920.

And is strongest on visual representation of humanity basically.

And things that happened in Ireland.

Unpleasant some of it.

This is important.

This is taken in Letterfrack in Galway.

And if you want any idea what the conditions were, courtesy of His

Majesty the King in Ireland, and don't forget, they ran the show...

Look, it's a hovel.

When you look at my collection you can see the conditions were

appalling, especially with the eviction photographs.

I have probably the biggest holding of eviction photos, there are about

81 or 2, I think, altogether.

British legislators had learned nothing, it seems, after the great

starvation, and during the evictions of the 1880s people could be evicted.

Because the rents were put so high under the law, that nobody could pay them.

They came along with a battering ram and literally battered down the house

and they were made totally uninhabitable.

I see the evicted family.

I think they tried to go back in and then they have boarded that as well.

And then a few belongings are gathered around here.

Robert French, he mostly took all those photographs of Wicklow,

Killarney, etc, etc.

But he also took important eviction photographs.

This, of course, is actually important as documentary, photography

worldwide actually.

The difference between the collection that's in the National

Library or the National Photographic Archive, which is a

branch of it anyway, is that -- they have a very good collection,

no doubt about that.

But pre-1870, very little, I've got it all.

I've got a lot of pre-1870, I made it my business.

I have to buy and sell in order to finance my own collecting.

I don't know how many auctions I've been to and fairs over the year, to

search out and go through thousands and thousands.

I don't know maybe I've gone through 2 million photographs.

If you go to a specific auction with nothing but photographs and albums in

there, and they will only illustrate that with three or four photographs.

That's when you need to be on the ground in the auction, viewing stuff.

People are phoning up for auction reports.

And could you send us the condition of this, that, the other,

take a photograph of it, that's not the way to do things.

You cannot beat being on the ground.

You can research stuff for ages and ages and ages, days, weeks or months

even and get nowhere. True.

Well you're very good at researching.

Thank you.

I enjoy it.

But yes, you're quite right, sometimes it leads nowhere.

Look at that, isn't that wonderful?

Weren't they better off then, never mind your modernisation.

There it is again, fantastic.

There are people that just specialise in India, China, Japan to start with,

including one famous guy. Anyway.

I don't want to be too easy prey for the hunters like you.

Ah yeah, hunters like us. That's the thing.

I don't think there's any sleepers here.

I try and make sure there aren't.

A sleeper is something in a sale that's been mis-catalogued or they

didn't notice it.

They say there's a sleeper in every sale...

That's apart from the auctioneer of course!

Sean's an absolute, you know, pillar of the photographic communities in

London and almost worldwide.

He's known at fairs everywhere, and at auctions, you know, he is a

gentleman who's always had a laser sharp focus for what he's

interested in.

When I'm cataloguing a sale, I think about people like Sean, and I know

that for a vendor, I can't risk leaving something in there that's

hugely, exceptionally valuable.

You know, it keeps me awake at night.

Good morning, everyone, my name is Austin Faraher.

I'm head of photographs here at Chiswick Auctions.

Today we have our 19th and 20th century photographs sale.

Thank you to all who viewed the sale and online or in person.

Right, time to get started then, lot 1 is for bid, patentee early

daguerreotypes, really interesting selection here and plenty of presale interest.

There's only two or three people in the auctions now.

It's all done online and all that, but in the old days, you could tell

by the buzz is it going to be a good auction or not?

260.

280 with me now, it's on my book at 280 pounds.

No, you never start bidding at the beginning.

You just get the feel of the auction.

See how it's going.

Wait until it goes on a bit.

340 on the telephone.

Well, if they're on the phone, it's kind of hard to know.

You just don't know.

Only the auctioneer know who's bidding and they keep that very close

to their chest.

And I will sell at 3,000 pounds.

Sold.

Not much of a chance there was it.

Lot 112...

Probably Brian May I'd say, Brian May and a couple of others.

100 pounds is on the telephone, it's a maiden bid for the

telephone bidder, 110, 110 against is in the room.

Telephone bidder is out.

It's with you sir, at the back of the room at 130 pounds, and I will

sell to our room bidder.

BANG

780. Thank you.

Now this is a group of photographs I bought just half an hour ago or

whatever, of the Congo 1943.

When the Belgians were still running the place.

And the reason I bought them was to sell on.

But it shows life in the Congo, but anyway, needs research.

And I know very little about what I bought, but just thought for 170

pounds they're very cheap, but anyway there we are.

Sometimes what's very useful is a dentist's mirror, an actual dentist's

mirror, which if you put it underneath it, sometimes the

photographs are just stuck down on the corners, on the four corners.

Sometimes, if you put that underneath, let's have a look here.

You can see, you can see if there's anything written, in this case there

isn't, in some cases there is.

And that can give you a clue as to what's written on the back.

That's where the dentist's mirror comes in.

Apart from when you've got a bad tooth!

It was an album of British military, mostly in Ireland.

And there was a photograph of Victoria Cross winners in the album.

And there was also a photograph of three rural Kerrymen.

And I thought I had beaten off the British Army collectors.

They surrendered to me, I thought, at 6,000, I didn't realise I'd to take

on the Victoria Cross collector, Lord A.

But he put out the white flag to the Irishman at a shade under 30,000.

A friend of mine said afterwards, you must have been crazy Sean, 30,000 for

three Kerrymen! (Laughs)

I was born in Mullagh, County Clare in 1946.

Initially I was a collector when I was seven or eight years of age, I

collected stamps, if you collect stamps, it tells you a lot about

history and geography.

The priest that taught me Latin, he used to own those photographs of the

Sistine Chapel and the sculpture and the paintings and all that.

That's perhaps where I got my artistic eye from.

I'm old enough to remember the beginnings of the rock'n'roll in

Ireland actually, and it had such an effect.

What the hell is that?!

Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Elvis was starting that time as well.

I left Ireland in '63 and headed for London.

I'd love the buzz and the excitement of the city and the twang

of the guitars and all that stuff.

I had various jobs, I was stacking shelves, then I got a job at

Claridge's making up the bills and then we left the digs and went up to

Lincolnshire picking potatoes, and do a physical hard day's work and then

in 1973 I dived into photography.

I was driving Mr. Murphy's truck and it was at that stage I was

starting to get into antiques.

Until one day I was spotted outside Sotheby's with Mr. Murphy's truck and

the "Man at Work" sign at the front and the "Man at Work" sign at the back.

Anyway, I came out of the auction, I think it was one of my

first or second auctions.

And Murphy's agent was sitting in the car waiting, it was in Belgravia, and

I mean, there are no cafes in Belgravia and he knew I wasn't in the cafe.

He couldn't figure out where I was!

As I came out he called me over and he just pulled the catalogue out of my hand.

Oh Sean, he says, I see you're thinking of getting into antiques.

I says, Andy, that's his name, I said I already am.

Well fair play to you lad, he says, you're obviously trying to

better yourself.

But Sean, he says, you can't have it both ways.

Mr. Murphy likes his profits.

Now I can't remember did he sack me.

I think he gave me a week or something or did I go, but one way

or the other I had to go anyway.

Best week of my life, I think!

I have 800 pounds bid, 850, 950, 1,000.

Sotheby's and Christie's were two great institutions that I studied at.

I call them universities of information.

1,300, 1,400, 1,500, 1,600.

I don't think he had a set plan when he started buying, but the

photographs market, which was a fledgling market at that time,

I might justifiably claim to have been the specialist for the first

auction of the modern market.

The material we were handling was pretty well exclusively 19th century.