It has been my luck to have been asked to photograph many famous and special people. I don’t only mean people of “celebrity” but rather people who have been in the news and contributed something special to mankind - from survivors of the Holocaust to the leader of Buddhism to the man responsible for the ecological movement in the United States.

They come together in front of the camera as fellow humans to me. There is a search within my work to see something within - not to just gloss the surface, but rather to feel their humanity.

These images are “formal portraits.” To me, another form of journalism, only differentiated by the fact that I am granted a sitting, an arrangement to meet these people for a few minutes or if I’m lucky, a few hours. It’s an arrangement to cooperate and allow the journalist to record that moment.

I am most grateful that I have been asked to hang these photographs in the company of the world’s greatest photojournalists, especially since it coincides with the tenth anniversary of the Perpignan Festival.

Michael O’Neill, July 1998

Michael O'Neill

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