THE death occurred last weekend of photographer extraordinaire and utter gentleman Denis Scannell, a man who was incapable of taking a bad photograph: his lens work from his ever-present cameras graced and enhanced these Property & Home pages, and those of the Irish (and, Cork) Examiner too on a wider front, for decades.
Apart from his family, photography was Denis’ life passion, having got his first camera at the age of 13, to document nature which he had always loved.
His opus spanned nature, art, architecture, Cork streets, buildings and their features, houses, commercial profiles, portraiture, the Munster property market, and other oddities.
A private archive added tens, if not hundreds of thousands more images to what Denis saw and ‘snapped’ over his lifetime in the ‘day’ job, with collections of landscapes, many taken at ‘the golden hour’ around dawn: chimney pots; old farm gates; nature; portraits and family (only Britain’s royal family was as well documented as his own children) and, later, as ‘Pops’ to his grandchildren.
Denis’s passing after an illness borne with grace leaves former colleagues and friends deeply sorrowed while his family — his beloved Ethel, (nee Vallely,) adult children Claire, Alison, Kate, Peter, and four grandchildren – in grief, although they have the comfort of many thousands of extraordinary, and happy images, to go with happier memories.
