FAQ’s

Of course!  We have a few different ways we can work together to have a piece of the O’Malley Collection in your life or as a gift for someone else.

• Online ordering – we’ve partnered with SmugMug to help fulfill all online order. They provide great customer service as well as a wide range of products so you can find the right fit for your needs.
• Custom collection order – Want to talk through a custom order? No problem, we can work with you to find the right picture(s), type of print that might fit best for your needs as well as the best print quality. min. purchases starting at $1,000, email info.irvisions@gmail.com to get the conversation started.
• Collector’s Corner – We will have a combination of ‘Limited Editions’ as well as some original Helen work available for collector enthusiasts.

As part of our “Happiness Guaranteed’ pledge to our customers, we are more than happy to work with you to help fix any problems.

• NOT HAPPY ☹ IF we can’t find a solution you are happy with (re-print, different size etc.) then return the print and you will get a FULL REFUND!
• DAMAGED NO problem, we will re-order and ship to you and no additional cost.  Please make sure to take a picture! It really helps for our records.
• GOT LOST We will guarantee & honor any purchases made online.

Simply send us an email (info.irvisions@gmail.com) within 30 days of receiving your order and we’ll help you out with a re-print or refund!

Note: If you’ve completed your purchase using a different currency than USD, the refund amount may not exactly match the purchase price due to fluctuations in the exchange rate.

Wall art

• Acrylic Metal
• Flat Mounted
• Metal/Alumini
• Canvas (all types, traditional, stretched, framed)

Keepsakes Mugs

• (11oz & 15oz)

Of course! We have a few different ways we can work together to have a piece of the O’Malley Collection in your life or as a gift for someone else.

• Online ordering – we’ve partnered with SmugMug to help fulfill all online order. They provide great customer service as well as a wide range of products so you can find the right fit for your needs.
• Custom collection order – Want to talk through a custom order? No problem, we can work with you to find the right picture(s), type of print that might fit best for your needs as well as the best print quality. min. purchases starting at $1,000, email info.irvisions@gmail.com to get the conversation started
• Collector’s Corner – We will have a combination of ‘Limited Editions’ as well as some original Helen work available for collector enthusiasts.

1

• Only some of Helen Hooker O’Malley’s later cameras and equipment have been found. We do know that in the 1920s, at the beginning of her photographic career, she was most likely able to purchase the most advanced equipment available. By necessity, the equipment she used on her travels throughout Asia, Europe and the United States. Records from the 1920’s through through the 1940’s indicate she sometimes used collapsible tripods.
• Helen holds a large plate camera that has not been identified as yet in a 1938 picture taken by her husband, Ernie O’Malley, on a local photography expedition. She also used a box camera with bellows. These accordion-pleat devices were generally attached to large and medium format cameras as a focusing aid. Helen took a photo of her husband and brother-in-law on a photography expedition to Kilteel, Co. Kildare in 1936. The picture reveals Ernie using a camera with bellows. His brother, Kevin is shooting with a much smaller handheld device. Both men use tripods to support their cameras. In a letter to Ernie O’Malley dated February 9, 1940, Helen requests: “bring…down my big plate camera and I could try and get a better photo of the two old men in the convent. My tripod would be needed.”
• Helen’s son, Cormac, remembers Helen had several Rollieflex cameras in the mid-1950s. These were manufactured in Germany by Franke & Heidecke. Rollieflex first marketed their high-end cameras in 1939. They were popular with professional photographers and photojournalists during the Second World War and after. In later years, Helen continued to use her Rollieflex cameras for transparencies and black and white film.
• In the 1970’s Helen occasionally used a simple Polaroid Instant camera to facilitate catching an image without having to wait for a formal print to be developed. She used the one-step invention to snap the status of a head she was sculpting, the sitter, or a detail of clothing. These were simply convenient utilitarian photographs.
• In the 1930s Helen’s equipment supplier and developer in Ireland was T. H. Mason on Grafton Street in Dublin. When she returned to the States in 1950 she used Weiman & Lester Photoservices off Park Avenue in New York City. Weiman & Lester was founded in 1937 by Polish immigrants Henry Weiman and his sister Janka Lester. Henry had come over in 1921 and was a photographer who was fond of the Leica ii camera released in 1932. He was a huge advocate for this camera and even founded the Miniature Photography Club dedicated to the use of the Leica II invented by the Leitz company in Wetzler, Germany. The modern camera was a small handheld device that could be carried in one’s pocket. It eventually replaced the large bellowed cameras that had to be supported on tripod. The Kilteel image of Kevin Malley suggests that Helen may have owned or used a Leica or similar small camera in the late 1930s.
• As integrated flash mechanisms were not available on the early cameras, Helen was dependent on auxiliary light sources and waiting for specific angles of natural sunlight to properly illuminate her subjects. Some of the 1930s and ‘40s photos from Ireland catch an edge or shadow of Ernie and others holding lighting and specialty lamps for her. We recently found her Sylvania Sun Gun II movie light and stand from 1962.

• There is no evidence that Helen used glass plates, although her mother, Blanche, and early art teachers may have. Photography was a common past time with women in society circles during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a young artist, Helen traveled the globe taking photographs on several continents. Most of these photographs still exist.
• After 1930, 35 mm film and more modern format cameras dominated the market. However, both would have been scarce during the Depression years in the United States and throughout “The Emergency” era (or Second World War) in Ireland. Some of the O’Malley’s photo development envelopes indicate they used Verichrome film after its introduction in 1931. Despite its name, Verichrome was a black & white film but did have better tonal balance than the other available film choices. Kodakchrome color film was invented in 1935 by Eastman Kodak of Rochester, NY. Helen frequently summered at her mother’s family’s farm in upstate New York, not far from Rochester and may have been familiar with the film but she did not use it until the 1950s when the color film finally became mainstream and replaced earlier options. Because of its complex processing requirements, Kodakchrome was most often used only by professional photographers.
• Helen began using Kodakchrome transparency film in the mid-1950s. In 1961, she was still having some of her American film developed and printed at Weiman & Lester in New York City. Sydney Lewis Greenberg a professional photographer and WW II photojournalist ran the Black and White darkroom there. Lewis would have interacted with Helen regarding her photos and exact instructions for them to produce her prints. Helen did use color film for family photos and those in Ireland in her later years. She died before the popularization of digital cameras.
• Some of the offices Helen used for the development and printing of her film in Dublin in the 1935-1946 period were T. H Mason on Grafton Street, Dublin and Kodak in her local village of Rathmines. During this time period, Helen and Ernie O’Malley would have their favorite images printed as postcard and Christmas notes to send to family and friends.
• In the 1960-70s Helen used Robert Dawson for her developing and printing in Dublin. Helen was faithful to NYC’s Weiman & Lester until they closed in the late 1960s. After the mid-1970s when she became tired of wielding her own heavy camera gear, Helen occasionally used a local professional photographer, Robert Baldridge of Greenwich, CT, to take portraits of her heads of sculpture in her studio and to occasionally snap images of the sitter.

At this point, we estimate there are nearly 20,000 negatives, prints, transparencies and photo albums in the Hooker and O’Malley Collections. We believe approximately 4,500 of the images were taken in Ireland, Europe and Asia between 1928 and 1985. However, more images are being discovered as we delve into the O’Malley archives.

• The Irish Visions team is in the process of sorting, listing, scanning, and preserving the collection. Some of Helen’s existing prints were actually chosen, cropped, and printed for Helen per her very specific instructions and during her lifetime.
• Much of Helen’s work has been donated to universities, libraries, museums and national archives. Two books of her photography have been published: Western Ways: Remembering Mayo through the Eyes of Helen Hooker and Ernie O’Malley (© 2015) and A Modern Eye: Helen Hooker O’Malley’s Ireland (© 2019).

We use a professional scanning service for large batches of images. When feasible we scan images at 1200 or 800 dpi. Lower resolution digital images are used for initial inspection and documentation. Our office Epson V850 is employed for internal purposes. Many of the O’Malley Collection’s original negatives and prints are in non-standard sizes so prove challenging to preserve and archive.
For specific Heritage Images, we are privilege to work with various experts around the world who assist us in verifying, identifying and grading the significance of the images.

One of the challenges we face identifying and replicating Helen’s film is the variation in negative sizes, particularly from the 1930’s. Negatives at that time were generally 2.25” x 1.25” or 1.5”x1.25” although there is still variation outside those parameters and few standardized print sizes as we know them today. Furthermore, some of the negatives and photographs have been damaged, so restoration is necessary. Fortunately, this is not the case for many of the images, in particular those chosen for the O’Malley Collection.

• 1918-1922: USA
• 1928-1929: Germany, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Ukraine.
• 1930: Greece
• 1935: USA, Japan, Korea, China, Mongolia, and Ireland
• 1935-1945: Ireland, some in France (1938)
• 1946-1949: minimal amount in Ireland and England
• 1950-1960: Connecticut, Colorado, New York in USA.
• 1960-1975: Connecticut, USA and Ireland

Early in her career, Helen photographed classmates, social friends and family. As she travelled, she liked to take pictures of landscapes, monuments, archaeological remains. monastic ruins, and medieval sculpture. As she became more comfortable with her art and surroundings, Helen progressed to seascapes streetscapes, farming, thatched cottages, and people in both casual and formal modes. She recorded her interior and architectural designs in addition to the gardens she cultivated at her homes in Dublin, Mayo, London, Colorado, and Greenwich. She always liked to photograph both her sculpture subjects, the progress of the work and the final product. One can see from the differences in her earlier and later photography, that Helen’s use of lighting improved and her photographs of people became more candid and casual, helping to capture their true personalities.

• 1918-1922: USA
• 1928-1929: Germany, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Ukraine.
• 1930: Greece
• 1935: USA, Japan, Korea, China, Mongolia, and Ireland
• 1935-1945: Ireland, some in France (1938)
• 1946-1949: minimal amount in Ireland and England
• 1950-1960: Connecticut, Colorado, New York in USA.
• 1960-1975: Connecticut, USA and Ireland

If you would like to share some of Helen Hooker O’Malley’s images, we do allow a limited number of the O’Malley Collection images to be used on personal non-commercial websites; however, prior permission MUST be received before use. Please contact our collection curator at info.irvisions@gmail.com if you would like to use one of our images. The use of any O’Malley Collection image on a commercial website, for a commercial purpose, or in any commercial context is not allowed without a specific license.

To license an image for use in any form of publication or media, please contact our collection curator at info.irvisions@gmail.com to discuss licensing possibilities. We will need to learn more about the basics (who, what, where, how and why) as well as where the image might be used (identity the image, the size of the image when printed, the print run, method of publication, manner of distribution, resolution quality and other relevant factors.)

Any museum, library, gallery, event space or other institution wishing to include an image from the O’Malley Collection in any exhibition should contact the collection Business Development Team at info.irvisions@gmail.com and we can talk through options.

We are open to exhibits World Wide.

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