Ireland - 1999

In 1999, I spent two months in Ireland. Five of those weeks were on a bicycle, riding 3,000 kilometres along the coastline, starting and finishing in Dublin.

I travelled light and rode every day, staying wherever I could, campsites, hostels, and the occasional bed-and-breakfast when the weather or fatigue caught up to me. I carried a camera and twenty rolls of film, not knowing then that this trip would mark the beginning of my life in photography.

It was a different time. No cell phone. No GPS. Just paper maps, weather rolling in off the Atlantic, and long stretches of narrow, textured road that demanded patience. There were days of steady rain, headwinds, steep climbs, and hours alone with nothing but the sound of tires on pavement and the landscape unfolding slowly.

At the time, it was hard. Physically and mentally. It taught me humility. When I came back, I didn’t even want to talk about it. Only later did its meaning surface. What felt exhausting became formative, shaping a discipline that still guides how I move through the world today.