The first major exhibition in the United States of the work of Fr. Francis Browne, SJ, an Irish Jesuit priest and photographer, was recently held at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame. Born in 1880 into a large, affluent family in Cork, Fr. Browne’s parents had both died by the time he was 18. His education and religious life were guided by his uncle, Bishop Robert Browne, who gave Fr. Browne his first camera. Bishop Browne would later gift his nephew a two-day cruise on the RMS Titanic, and Fr. Browne took one of the last known photos of the ship above water. Here David Acton, curator of photographs at the Raclin, answered some of our questions about Fr. Browne’s life and art.
Who was Fr. Francis Browne, SJ? Why did you want to stage this exhibition?
Fr. Browne was one of the leading Irish photographers in the early decades of the Republic. He was not a commercial photographer, and for the most part, he captured what interested him. His body of work is unusual for documenting the common people of Ireland — their lives and culture. This is the chief reason for my interest, for at Notre Dame, Irish history, language and culture are subjects of concentrated academic study. Fr. Browne’s historical participation — on the Titanic and in World War I — provide similar historical documents.
Having acquired the largest holdings of Fr. Browne’s work in the United States, we wanted to share the work and inform the university of this new resource.
What do you know about the connection between Fr. Browne’s vocation and his photography?
Fr. Browne’s vocation as a priest was primary in his life. His interest in photography as a hobby, which began when he was a teenager, was remarkable both for his consistency and for the personal experiences it documented.
I haven’t seen documentation of the fact, but I assume that his superiors provided photographic equipment, film and paper when he asked. Occasionally he took on commercial projects and published his pictures in magazines. Earnings from these projects were sent to the Jesuits’ provincial treasurer and eventually accumulated into a fund to assist Jesuit students.
What were Fr. Browne’s typical subjects as a “photographer priest”?
During most of his career Fr. Browne used his photographic hobby to explore Ireland and the Irish. Having grown up in an affluent family and attended only private schools, meeting the Irish people and learning of the places and customs were new and exciting discoveries.
He made solitary expeditions around the country by train and bicycle at a time when the country was isolated and economically underdeveloped. This was very unusual, for during the first decades of Irish Independence photographers generally concentrated on subjects of natural beauty and Dublin city. His stature as a priest assured his good intentions and always garnered hospitality.
Photography enabled Fr. Browne to meet and record the varied people of Ireland, explore the unblemished countryside and seacoasts where they lived and worked, and to observe and record their customs and culture.
What was Fr. Browne’s connection to the Titanic?
From his youth, machines and transport interested Fr. Browne, including bicycles, automobiles and steamships. He often took his camera to Cork Harbor to photograph ships and the naval systems and people who maintained them.
In April 1912, his uncle Robert Browne, Bishop of Cobh, gave him a first-class ticket to sail on the first leg of the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic. He photographed the journey from Southampton in England to Cherbourg, France, and then to Queensland (Cobh) in Ireland. His images captured the journey, the ship, and her passengers and crew. Fr. Browne disembarked at home before the liner sailed to its disastrous sinking in the North Atlantic. After the tragedy, newspapers and magazines sought him out and published several of his photographs of the Titanic, bringing the first recognition to his work as a photographer.
What did he witness during World War I?
Fr. Browne was ordained to the priesthood in July 1915 and enlisted as a chaplain in the Irish Guards. (He had yet to complete his tertianship, the last stage of Jesuit formation.) He served in France and Flanders through World War I. Fr. Browne preached and ministered to the wounded, the dying and dead on the front lines. He became known for his bravery. He was wounded five times, and the British government awarded him the Military Cross, along with a bar — a second award — “For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. … His courage and determination under heavy shell-fire were a magnificent example to all.” The French government awarded him the Croix de Guerre.
He was allowed to carry his camera in the war, a rare privilege in the British Army. His photographs of colleagues, action, the front lines and postwar occupation in Germany were private, and not meant to be published. He collected his war photographs in an album and printed one of them, “The Watch on the Rhine,” among colleagues in the Irish Guards.
What about Fr. Browne’s work aesthetically and/or technically impresses you?
Aesthetically, Fr. Browne’s photographs embody a finely developed sense of composition. He was skillful at balancing shape, form and tone and impressing the viewer to his intention. This was partly instinctive and also reflects his own personal study of painting and sculpture in school and his visits to churches and museums, especially during his time in Italy. Later he attended photography exhibitions and occasionally contributed to them.
Generally, he preferred to photograph people, striving to tell stories through his images. These are the kinds of photographs that appeared in popular pictorial magazines in Britain (Illustrated London News, The Graphic, The Sketch, The Tatler) and America (Look, Life) through much of Fr. Browne’s career.
Photography enabled Fr. Browne to meet and record the varied people of Ireland, explore the unblemished countryside and seacoasts where they lived and worked, and to observe and record their customs and culture.
In the decades preceding his career, photography began to be considered as fine art. He was an enthusiastic reader of amateur photography magazines and would have been well aware of the ongoing disputes.
Technically, Fr. Browne was able to progressively refine his practice as new equipment and procedures came to the fore. This seems to have been accomplished by reading and solitary experiments. Although he was a member of Irish photography clubs, he doesn’t seem to have associated much with other photographers.
Fr. Browne made photographs chiefly for his own interest, and they were seldom printed. Few original prints survived at his death. In 1985, however, some 42,000 negatives were discovered in the Provincial Archive in Dublin. The photographs in the exhibition were printed in 2023 expressly for the University of Notre Dame and are part of the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art permanent collection.
Top photo of Fr. Francis Browne, SJ, by Fr. Michael Garahy, SJ (1873–1962), courtesy of the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame