In the late seventies, every Friday Tony Ozia shows a box full of black and white photos taken in the city in the editorial office of In Dublin magazine. At the time, the Irish writer Colm Tybn was working as a journalist for a magazine, where they met.

Tyban immediately praised the photographer’s work. “I have never seen anything like it,” he writes in the book Dubliners (1990), the result of a collaboration between the two.

Oshia was born in 1947 on the island of Valentia in southern Ireland. His works tell the story of everyday life in County Kerry, Dublin, and the northern frontiers. He wants to dwell on collective, ceremonial moments in which the community gathers to celebrate or remember the past. But his attention always turns to individuals, caught in moments of meditation or elevation. “Even if the subjects are performing, wait for the moment when they lower their guard and the camera spirit becomes restless and reluctant,” Tiben reiterates. The light of day, The first volume, which collects shots taken by Oceania between 1979 and 2019, is now published by RRB Photobooks and the Gallery of Photography Ireland.