KINGDOM OF HOUNDS

Community, Photography, Publications

For decades, legendary Irish documentary photographer Tony O’Shea has captured the country’s annual drag hunt, and a country’s rich history along with it.

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KINGDOM OF HOUNDS

WORDS BY Olivia Finlayson

Like Guinness, Saint Paddy’s Day, U2, and shamrocks, the Kerry Beagle is an Irish icon, though perhaps lesser known. While recognised as an official breed only in 1991, the Kerry Beagle is the only extant scent hound breed native to Ireland.

Rare (even in Ireland) and distinctly un-beagle-like due to its larger, more athletic frame, the Kerry Beagle is the star of a centuries-old Irish tradition known as drag hunting.

A humane alternative to fox hunting, drag hunting uses an artificial scent—aniseed, for example. The scent line is laid to take full advantage of the landscape and its best jumping opportunities.

For decades, legendary Irish documentary photographer Tony O’Shea has captured the annual event. Renowned for his “anthropologist’s eye for social realities”—as described by the Photo Museum Ireland —O’Shea grew up in South Kerry, regular witness to the rambunctious gathering of locals and their dogs:

“I would regularly see and hear the hounds and their owners on the Sundays of late spring and summer as they gathered for the drag hunts. It looked and sounded primordial and somehow to belong in this terrain on the western edges of Europe.”

Newly released Kingdom of Hounds catalogues O’Shea’s drag hunt photography through the decades. A powerful and profound glimpse into not only the steeplechase-like spectacle, but into Ireland’s spectacular landscape, the lives of its people and their deeply rooted traditions.

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Kingdom of Hounds is published by RRB Photobooks
All photographs by Tony O’Shea

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