As we amble along the craggy path of life, we meet a myriad of characters along the way. Most of the time we pass each other without notice and leave little or no impression, some of the time we collide momentarily and subsequently fade from memory, but in the rare bejewelled moments we meet someone who embeds themselves in the brain forever.
Henry Wills is one of those rare humans. The prince of photographers has engraved himself in Mayo life like few others. He is hugely talented with camera in hand and has recorded the social, sporting and political history of Mayo and Ireland for a lifetime.
Last Friday night he launched his wonderful book ‘In All Kinds Of Weather’ in The Mount Falcon Estate in Ballina. It was a night of great fun, friendship and recollections, and it broke my heart to be otherwise engaged on the evening.
Henry’s pictures have danced in our eyes for generations. He captured Willie Joe Padden flying high over Croke Park in an iconic shot from 1985. Four summers later he was on hand to click the shutter when John O’Mahony stood dejected in the middle of the same field following our All Ireland defeat to Cork as supporters held a banner with the words ‘Keep The Faith’ emblazoned on it. The picture captured the essence of what it means to be of Mayo. Johnno was devastated – we all were – but the resilience of our people, the refusal to give up on our dream was captured in that one perfect picture.
Wisdom sometimes decrees that a picture paints a thousand words – Henry’s freeze-frames paint libraries in our heads. One of Henry’s pictures develops pathways in the mind where other images are projected into the imagination. How he does it is beyond me, but then again Henry exists on a plain far removed from my mundane existence.
As well as being a genius, Henry is also one of the nicest, funniest, most gracious men one could hope to meet. His courtesy and composure have got him to places the rest of us could never hope to tread. His friendship and lifelong connections brought him to Áras an Uachtaráin to take wonderfully personal pictures when Mary Robinson became president of our nation.
The Ballina woman knew the quality of the man who arrived in her midst that night, and he took the most beautiful of pictures which captured the essence of Mrs Robinson and her family.
Henry is much-loved everywhere, but at the zenith of local media in the 1970s and ’80s, he developed a special place in Erris hearts. He would arrive in Belmullet to meet Eamon Shevlin, the famed Erris correspondent for The Western People. The two of them would head off across the barony, capturing words and pictures from the most colourful of characters.
We loved Henry. He had a way with him that appealed to the Erris psyche. He was full of fun, mad banter and sincerity. All of those traits were/are important if one wants to get inside the defences of those of us with Erris passports, and Henry had them in abundance.
He photographed people, places and a few animals too. On one famous occasion he photographed a donkey who had reached the ripe old age of 38 and Shevlin wrote up the story. The picture and words appeared in the following week’s paper, but sadly by then the poor old donkey had departed this world.
“He lived happily for almost 40 years, but within days of meeting myself and Shevlin he was gone. We must have made some impression on him,” Henry explained.
I’m blessed to have spent some great times alongside Henry in this industry. We spent a great day on Doolough Strand with a colourful band of creatives from Macnas, the Galway-based performance company. He caught some iconic moments, but the laughter and the craic made it even more memorable.
However, the greatest memories I have of Henry revolve around the testing days we spent in Erris following the landslide in the Rossport/Glengad area in 2003. Our mutual friend Councillor Gerry Coyle alerted both of us on that pivotal night and we spent much of the following week in the area.
I tried to put words on the situation, but they were nothing without Henry’s pictures which brought the sad situation to the world in living colour.
That’s what sets Herny Wills apart. There are other great photographers in our midst. Men and women who light up our lives with their talent, but few, if any will ever reach into my heart the way Henry has.
The prince of photographers. One of the finest.
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