Photo Museum Ireland
Artist In Residence 2025
Steve Pyke
Photo Museum Ireland is delighted to announce Steve Pyke as the latest recipient of our Archive Residency programme. Initiated as part of our Photo Museum Ireland Collection initiative launched in 2022, our Artists’ Archive Residencies are designed to support artists who seek to create archive records of their key series work made in Ireland.
The second recipient of this residency, Steve Pyke, is working to complete his landmark Pyke’s landmark Scribendi: Irish Writers – 1982-2025 – a definitive visual survey of leading contemporary Irish writers. Pyke is currently working in Ireland, the UK and the U.S. to complete work on his landmark series of photographic portraits of acclaimed Irish writers, playwrights and poets. His subjects, recognised as Ireland’s finest writers and poets, include Kevin Barry, Anne Enright, Seamus Heaney, Edna O’Brien, and Colm Toibín. Encompassing over 70 individual portraits, this important series is a visual testament to the diversity and vitality of contemporary Irish literature. Sadly, some of the subjects featured in this collection have passed away, adding a layer of historical significance to Pyke’s work.
Since 2024, Steve has been an Artist-in-Residence at Photo Museum Ireland for 2025 and is working with Collection Manager Brendan Maher to produce an archive set of prints which will be acquired for the Photo Museum Ireland Collection. Steve is also availing of our Darkroom facilities to complete work on his writers series. The residency will culminate with the international premiere of the Scribendi exhibition and book, published by Lilliput Press, at Photo Museum Ireland on 9th October 2025.
About our Artists’ Archive Residencies: This Archive Residency residency programme underscores Photo Museum Ireland’s mission to support creative experimentation while deepening public engagement with photographic history.
The first iteration of this residency was a pilot project with DIgital Arts Manager Dabniel Scully working with renowned Irish photographer Tony O’Shea over a 3-year period from 2019-2022 to digitise his extensive archive for Photo Museum Ireland’s Collection initiative.
In 2024, for the second archive initiative, our Collection Manager Brendan Maher worked with a curatorial advisor to the Estate of Akihiko Okamura Masako Toda to digitise and restore the Irish work of Japanese photographer Akihiko Okamura’s was the second recipient of the residency, saving this vitally important visual representation of the Troubles in Ireland.
“This residency is a natural extension of our commitment to fostering artistic innovation and engaging with the history of photography,” said Trish Lambe, CEO of Photo Museum Ireland. “We’re excited to work with Steve ‘s work to share this important Irish work with audiences”
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY:
Steve Pyke is a renowned photographer known for his intimate and intense black-and-white portraits of extraordinary thinkers, creators, and artists of our time. Pyke created his first photographs in Ireland in 1980 and has maintained a deep, ongoing association with a place central to the development of his artistic practice. Widely hailed as a classic landmark ‘photographic novel’ I Could Read the Sky, created with the writer Timothy O’Grady was first published in 1997. In 2023 it was reissued in a new, expanded edition by Unbound. Pyke has spent the last 40 years seeing the world through a creative lens. Born in Leicester, UK, Pyke resided in London and NYC for many years. Steve now lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana and continues to work in Ireland and internationally. He is currently an Artist-in-Residence at Photo Museum Ireland 2024-2025.