About this photograph
Morning shadows stretch across an empty road towards the spire of St. John's. A Kerry town before the day begins.
The spire belongs to St John's in Listowel, a Gothic church designed by the Limerick architect John Pain and opened in 1819. For almost 170 years it was the town's Church of Ireland parish church. It closed for worship in 1988 and found a second life as St John's Theatre and Arts Centre, so the building at the end of this road now fills with plays, music and readings.
That suits Listowel, which calls itself the literary capital of Ireland and has a fair claim to it. John B. Keane kept a pub here and wrote his plays in the town; Bryan MacMahon taught in its school; Writers' Week, founded in 1970, is Ireland's oldest literary festival.
Early in the morning, before the shops open and the traffic comes, the long shadows of the trees fall across the road and everything leads the eye to the spire. It is street photography of the quietest kind: an Irish town in black and white, waiting for the day to begin.
