Kevin Dwyer is grandson of Billy Dwyer, the "black sheep" of the Dwyer family, who left the family business of Dwyer & Company to set up Sunbeam Wolsey Limited. Kevin's career has taken him from marketing executive to photographer and best selling author.

 

Interview by Paul Daly from

Reflections of Cork

AN INSIGHT INTO CORK LIFE BY CORK PEOPLE.

Published 2004 by Evening Echo Publications.

Photograph Richard Mills

 

"I was born in Ireland in the City of Cork in 1944. My education started with Christian Brothers, Cork, following throught to Downside School, Somerset , England.

When I came home from school in 1962 and started in the Cork Textile Group Sunbeam Wolsey, I was very much a foreigner in my own land. It took me quite a while to develop friends because I had been brought up in a sort of a different background. My career gravitated towards the marketing side of the textile industry.

In 1970 I married Fiona. At the same time I became Advertising Manager for the textile group and managed an advertising budget then that would be equivalent today to about, well over a million Euros. So it was a big spend. We went all over Ireland setting up sophisticated photoshoots. By 1973 recessionary times started hitting. In 1974, I felt that I would not be retiring from a job in the textile industry at the age of 65.

So I found a job in the banking world in Cork, in a small bank called the Commercial Banking Company Limited. The bank was taken over by Barclays Bank in 1982. Barclays didn't get it very right in Ireland. In 1986 I was faced with the opportunity or threat of voluntary redundancy, at the age of 42, with two children in secondary school - which was quite scary on reflection. Within a few months, my brother Peter who had his own fashion business said to me - he knew that I was a keen amateur photographer - 'Look Kevin, you set up all of these fashion shoots yourself – why don't you consider photographing my collection?'

So I photographed my brother's collection and this led me to go forward, into commercial photography and eventually, into the skies.

In 1995 1 went to New York to the Yacht Club to present my aerial photographs of the Irish coastline to some American yachtsmen who were being invited over to a cruise in 1996. When I was going to the States, I rang Tommy Barker, who worked in the Examiner at the time, and I said, 'Tommy, do you realise I've been invited to the New York Yacht Club?' And he said, 'Wow!' And I said. 'Can I send you in some of the photographs?' And the Examiner did a two-page feature. But the important aspect of all of this was the fact that Cork publisher Con Collins, saw the feature and he rang me up and said to me, 'Kevin. I'd love to publish a book of your work.'

So in 1996 I created. 'Ireland. Our Island Home: an aerial tour around Ireland's coastline.' The book was published in 1997. And whereas a coffee table book doesn't make it to the best-.sellers list, this book did. for the best part of six to eight weeks, which was absolutely astounding.

Looking back over my career, I look around with horror at the pressure that children are under today with the Leaving Certificate and points. I personally feel that I went to the University of Life in Sunbeam Wolsley, Millfield, Cork. It was a fantastic place. And I think that having come back from school in England with no knowledge of this place called Ireland. I had this sort of mission in my life to find out about it. I think I've gone out and visualised it through my own eyes. and I've had the great fortune of being able to share with everybody else what I found, through my books."