Hanvey (The Father)
Bobbie was born in Brookeborough, Co. Fermanagh, in 1945. During the early years of the Troubles in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he worked as a psychiatric nurse. However, he chose to leave the hospital to minister to the wider community by documenting the madness all around him with his camera and microphone. (Given the Troubles, and that George Bernard Shaw claimed that ‘Ireland was the largest open-air lunatic asylum in the World’, this move seemed to make sense!) Bobbie was an ardent campaigner for civil rights in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The Troubles presented Bobbie with an opportunity. By photographing the eerie aftermath of bombsites and shootings, he was able to provide for his family while also becoming known as one of the country’s leading press and portrait photographers. In 1985, 1986 and 1987, he won the Northern Ireland Provincial Press Photographer of the Year Award, and in 1985 and 1987 he also won the Northern Ireland overall award for Best People Picture. These were the only three years that he entered the competitions.
Bobbie has also published two collections of photographs: Merely Players: Portraits from Northern Ireland (1999), which presents portraits taken since the 1970s of poets, playwrights, paramilitaries, priests and politicians. They include Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, Danny Morrison, David Hammond, Gerry Adams, Sammy Duddy and others.
His most recent photographic book, The Last Days of the R.U.C, First Days of the P.S.N.I (2005), presents the only historic account of the transition of the Royal Ulster Constabulary to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. His book, The Mental (1996), is an account of his early days spent as a psychiatric nurse at The Downshire Hospital in Downpatrick.
Bobbie also hosted a programme on Downtown Radio called The Ramblin’ Man for thirty-six years, where he interviewed over 1,000 people of all shades of persuasion throughout and after the Troubles. Guests on his programme included Ulster Volunteer Force leader Gusty Spence, Provisional Irish Republican Army veteran Joe Cahill, the last four Chief Constables of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and its successor organisation, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, John Hermon, Hugh Annesley, Ronnie Flanagan and Hugh Orde. Other guests included writers Eugene McCabe, Maurice Leitch and J.P. Donleavy, as well as soldiers, sailors and Travellers.
Bobbie’s photographs have appeared in Paris Vogue, The Village Voice, The Melbourne Age, The Irish Times, The Economist and NPR. He wrote a weekly column for The Belfast Newsletter, Ireland’s oldest newspaper. Still active as a photographer, only recently going ‘electric’ (digital!), his unique collection of photographs is to be found in the Burns Library, Boston College, Massachusetts.
An interesting footnote to this fact is that Fr. McElroy, S.J., a Jesuit priest and, like Bobbie, a Brookeborough man, was one of the original founders of Boston College, Mass., back in 1863; quite a fitting coincidence, given that Bobbie’s body of work would find a home in its archives.
Bobbie currently lives in Downpatrick, Co. Down.
‘When I first stumbled across the photographs of
Bobbie Hanvey, I thought I had found an undiscovered
master — perhaps another sort of Vivian Maier.
Arguably, Hanvey’s photographic work rivals that of great
American photographers such as Walker Evans,
Dorothea Lange, and even the spot news artist, Weegee.’
–NPR
‘Bobbie Hanvey is extraordinarily talented.
He just has an insatiable appetite for photographing.’
–Dr Robert O’Neill, Burns librarian at Boston College.
Steafán Hanvey (The Son)
Steafán was born in Downpatrick, Co. Down, in 1972, five months after Bloody Sunday and one month before Bloody Friday. His exposure to all things musical began in utero as he is the son of musicians. In the 1970s, his household was renowned for its traditional ‘sessions’. Still in short trousers, Steafán was often called upon to regale guests with a rendition of ‘Will You Go, Lassie Go’, ‘The Cobbler’ and ‘Carrickfergus’. On his mother’s side of the family, he has recently discovered a lineage back to the Brontë sisters. His teenage years were spent fronting rock bands, one of which was an earlier incarnation of Relish, which showcased for CBS Records no fewer than three times.
Steafán graduated from the University of Ulster in 1995 with a Bachelor’s degree in Literature and Politics, majoring in American Studies. He spent the third year of his degree studying sound-engineering and American literature as an exchange-student at Western Washington University. Upon his return, he covered the IRA ceasefire in 1994 as a sound engineer for Macmillan Media in Belfast, before pursuing a Master’s in International Politics at the University of Helsinki, where his thesis dealt with a comparative analysis of Ireland and Finland’s neutrality policies. While in Finland, he gave courses in Irish film and conflict resolution at his alma mater, contributed to a government-sponsored Immigrant Musician Workshop at Sibelius Academy, hosted an Irish music radio show, and sang in two Irish/Finnish folk groups. This led in 2000 to a solo EP recording of his original compositions. In short, he was back to his first love.
By special invitation, Steafán performed to a private audience at Dublin’s Focus Theatre, the closing of which was formally presided over by the Irish President, Michael D. Higgins. Steafán has shared the stage with Liam Ó Maonlaí & The Hothouse Flowers in the US, Ireland and Spain, and many other acclaimed Irish artists including Relish, Jack L, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Mary Coughlan, Don Baker, The Walls and John Spillane. His critically-acclaimed debut Steafán Hanvey and The Honeymoon Junkies was released in Finland in 2005, Ireland in 2006 and the US in 2011. National television and radio appearances followed, as did several in-studio sessions with BBC Radio Ulster, NPR and others. Hot Press magazine called his debut ‘a rare delight!’ and opined that it was of an ‘impressive quality’. Gerry Anderson of the BBC remarked that ‘Steafán has earned his place at the table.’
In 2013, he released his second studio album, Nuclear Family, in North America through eOne Distribution, a record that had been mixed by Franz Ferdinand and The Cardigans’ producer, Tore Johansson. Nuclear Family features several guest appearances including Relish and Liam Ó Maonlaí (Hothouse Flowers), and was mastered in London by Mandy Parnell, who has also worked on albums for Feist, John Martyn and Björk.
In addition to producing two albums and a mini-album, Steafán has co-produced, curated, directed and toured a multimedia show in over twenty states of America. This was the platform from which he started introducing his poetry to new ears. Partly funded by The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and his most ambitious production to date, Look Behind You! A Father and Son’s Impressions of The Troubles Through Photograph and Song was hailed by the New York Irish Voice as ‘truly groundbreaking’. They also said Nuclear Family was ‘brilliant!’ NPR took note and produced a short documentary about Look Behind You!
Steafán has produced three music videos, one of which, Secrets and Lies, was selected for the kinolounge special program of the 22nd Sao Paulo International Short Film Festival. In 2016, he was invited to tour the university circuit in Scandinavia by The Irish Itinerary and The European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies. Steafán has since begun work on his third studio album and is also working on his first feature-length documentary film. He lives in Helsinki
