Michael Mcilvaney
My name is Michael McIlvaney. I am a street photographer living in the UK and Ireland.
When not working to a project my work is generally unplanned, always candid and in public. All images derive from single shots. I delight in capturing the spontaneous events and serendipitous occurrences that unfold before the camera’s lens, transforming otherwise mundane scenes into moments of theatre. I search out those fleeting movements, flashes of colour, gestures and glances, and moments of connection that, when captured, reveal a story that would otherwise have been left untold.
I’m captivated by the city; the place where the public and private spheres jostle. I seek out the dancing light and deeply dark shadows which offer to dramatise the “performers” in any given scene.
I feel at home in the flow of the streets, amongst the bubbling, yet to happen, encounters. In collaboration with luck, described by Agee as one of the “cardinal creative forces at work in the universe”, I strive to transform the actual, and mundane, into a new, sometimes conceptually different, kind of aesthetic reality.
