Some great photos by a Great uncle

May 8, 2008 by John    7 Comments    Posted under: photos, stuff

My Great Uncle, Harry Braine, set up the Dublin Camera club in 1945. Apparently he spent some time in the Tower of London having been arrested as a spy for being found with photos that were used to plan attacks with the bouncing bomb, or something like that. I say apparently as I suspect my father, Harry Braine, added a pinch of salt to some of his stories.

Apparently, he also had one of the first cars in Dublin and he also invented the car battery, or at least a part of it. Although I have seen photos that give the latter some credence, and there’s no doubting that he was a prominent member of the Photographic Society of Ireland. According to the History of the Dublin Camera Club (pdf), club meetings were sometimes held in his Drumcondra garage and he won many awards. The Bathers, above, is available to buy for a few hundred quid the last time I checked. Maybe I’ll buy it some day. But for now it’d have to go to the bottom of a list of currently unaffordable luxuries.

Here are some other great shots he took. Some backstage photos from Dublin theater back in the day. Found at www.news4.ie

And our youngest is the latest in a long line of Harry Braines.

P.S. Speaking of photography, here’s a fascinating project:

  This exhibition features people whose lives are coming to an end. It explores the experiences, hopes and fears of the terminally ill. All of them agreed to be photographed shortly before and immediately after death.