Lafayette Photography

02/07/2026

We had the absolute delight of meeting and photographing Linda Ervine MBE MRIA, language rights activist, champion of Ulster Irish, and a dedicated supporter of the Gaelic revival.

Linda is the leader of the "Turas" Irish Language Project in East Belfast, which has played a transformative role in promoting and revitalising the Irish language within the community. She was recently appointed to the Council of State, where she advises President Catherine Connolly on matters relating to the Irish language.

We would like to sincerely thank Linda and her team for accommodating us and for agreeing to take part in the Lafayette Photograph Archive Project. It was a privilege to document such an influential figure in Ireland's cultural and linguistic landscape.
📷 🇮🇪

16/06/2026

Before Kneecap, before CMAT, and long before Bono Ireland had already exported a global superstar.

John McCormack, Athlone’s finest and one of the world’s most celebrated tenors.
Born in June 1884, he sold over 800 recordings in his career, moving effortlessly from opera houses to Irish ballads. At just 23, he became the youngest tenor to sing at Covent Garden. Famed for his flawless diction and seemingly endless breath control, and to top it off he was also a Papal Count.

These portraits from the Lafayette Studio show him at different stages of his career.

11/06/2026

📸🕰Some snaps taken by one of our photographers on a weekend trip on the ferry to Hollyhead back in the 1960's. Check out the fashion and one hip priest.

04/06/2026

A huge congratulations to today's UCD Graduates! 👩‍🎓👨🏾‍🎓👨‍🎓

29/05/2026

A Witness to History 📸🕰

From the same balcony on Westmoreland Street, these two images look out over O’Connell Street as Ireland gathers, in very different ways.

In 1932, an extraordinary crowd, nearly a million strong makes its way towards Phoenix Park for the Eucharistic Congress. A moment when Dublin became the centre of a global event.

Fast forward a few decades, and the scene shifts into colour. It’s St Patrick’s Day, around 1960, and O’Connell Street is alive with celebration, energy, and a hint of modern Dublin beginning to emerge.

Standing in both scenes is Nelson’s Column, long before its dramatic end in 1966.

The Lafayette studio balcony was an observer to Dublin's history and a changing Ireland over the decades.

There are many more images taken from the this view point in our historic archive.
https://www.lafayette.ie/photoselection/viewalbum?albumIdentifier=efe6b544-b524-425d-b256-7de4aea5c1f2

28/05/2026

From the archive ⚓📸

A crew gathered on deck, captured in a quiet moment together. The details are unknown, but the setting suggests life at sea and the routines that came with it.

Stealing the spotlight, one small companion who seems perfectly at home among the crew 🐾 A simple photograph, but a nice glimpse into a working world from another time.

22/05/2026

📸📸Meet “Miss Kennedy,” recently uncovered in the Lafayette Archive.📸📸

We don’t know who she was, where she came from, or what occasion called for that ever-so-slightly scandalous shoulder…

But over a century later, she’s still serving mystery, glamour and we’re completely charmed.

20/05/2026

📸🕰Stepping back into Dublin of the 1970s. 📸🕰

The historic Lafayette Building, once home to one of the city’s most influential photographic studios. Today it houses the Irish Wax Museum, but its walls once witnessed the creation of some of Ireland’s most significant portraits.

From James Connolly to Pádraig Pearse to James Joyce, many of our most enduring images were crafted right here in this central Dublin studio.

15/05/2026

Beatrice Rose Stella Tanner, better known by her stage name Mrs Patrick Campbell or Mrs Pat, was an English stage actress, best known for appearing in plays by Shakespeare, Shaw and Barrie. These included Shaw's Pygmalion where she originated the role of Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle in the West End in 1914. Doolittle was then the inspiration for Pretty Woman.

Hopefully some day we'll have Julia Roberts in the Lafayette Archive.

10/05/2026