There are times when my camera feels like just another limb, when there is nothing more natural than looking, then clicking to the beautiful sound of a shutter. Photography has given me a way to explore, ask questions, seek answers and shine the light on connections between people and places, ideas and issues, challenges and solutions.
It has brought me to some amazing places and enabled me to meet some outstanding people. Photography has been an invite in other lives and worlds, and I just love that. There were always cameras around my house. I remember my father turning our bathroom into a darkroom when I was young and being mesmerized by the photo developing process. However, it was not until I started travelling did I really begin to explore the craft, this time in digital format. The more I started to take photos, the more I started to see. And then the more I starter to see, the more I saw that there was to see. That’s the beauty of it: capturing an image is like an unveiling.
When I take photos now I want them to sing a story of beauty, possibility, diversity and hope. In doing so, I hope they open minds and hearts, including my own.
When Clare peers through the lens she looks with a level of curiosity that seeks to see you fully. In that level of inquiry and witnessing she captures magic -the essence of who you are. Her real gift is that she just gets you inside and out!- Mari Kennedy
‘You see a lot of development photos but Clare’s are different: you can sense that the photographer understands development and when she takes a photo of a person is somehow “with them” in it, alongside them rather than at the end of the camera’. - Frank Flood, Director, Irish Aid Volunteering Centre.