Tommy Eibrand: a life less ordinary

PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST?Award-winning photographer Tommy Eibrand is pictured relaxing with a cuban cigar at his home in Tourmakeady in 2005.?Pic: Michael McLaughlin

Tommy Eibrand: a life less ordinary


OF all the conversations, moments, trips, assignments, and cups of coffee I had the pleasure of sharing with Tommy Eibrand over the course of our 15-year friendship, one stands out.
We were on the long and winding road to Belmullet one afternoon about ten years ago and Tommy, photographer, philosopher, raconteur, and driver was in full flow.
Our main reason for going to Erris that day was to cover the exploits of the St Brendan’s College footballers but if there was ever an example of the journey being more memorable than the destination, then this was it.
Over the course of a couple of hours, Tommy recalled his days hanging out of planes in Africa taking aerial photographs, his time in the Cambodian jungle with Pol Pot (the infamous communist revolutionary leader), and how a Swedish-born adventurer like him came to call Tourmakeady home in later years.
The fact that Tommy took three phone calls along the way that afternoon, conducting one in his native tongue, another in French, and the last in English, merely enhanced his reputation as a living legend in my eyes.
There was nobody quite like Tommy Eibrand.
He was more than just a well-travelled, well-read and incredibly talented photographer. He believed life was for living and he intended to make the most of his time here.
He took pictures for The Mayo News at a time when the world of photography in this part of the world was changing from rolls of film and dark rooms to digital cameras and e-mail.
And in keeping with a man who always prided himself on being ahead of his time, Tommy never missed a beat.
One day he was arriving in our offices in Westport with hundreds of printed photographs under his arm, the next he was e-mailing dozens of shots from his home in the heart of Tourmakeady.
In hindsight, it’s obvious now that he loved the challenge of that changing world for newspapers and photographers, and he and his new digital camera travelled the length and breadth of the county and the country for The Mayo News during the 1990s and during the last decade.
It would be easy to be economical with the truth about Tommy’s abilities as a photographer now that he is no longer with us, but that is not something that would have sat well with the man himself.
But there is no need to ‘talk up’ Tommy’s achievements and abilities as a photographer; whatever it was, he had it.
He had the awards to prove it too, including the prestigious PPAI trophy for a wonderful sports action picture taken in 1999, on one of those days when Tommy did what he did best.
Days when he used a lifetime’s experience behind the lens to focus those twinkling, michevious eyes of his on a subject, and then capture the moment for posterity.
Whether it was action pictures or portraits, hard news or soft features, sport or news, politics or art, Tommy knew what was he looking for. And, most importantly, he knew how to get it.
Tommy loved cigars, coffee, and greyhounds, almost as much as he loved life itself.
If Tommy had something to say, he said it. He was not in the business of sugar coating the realities of life or business or politics, or sidestepping the hard issues.
But he was seldom happier than when he was perched behind his trusty camera, watching the world unfold through its weather-beaten lens.
Our world will be a much duller place without Tommy Eibrand. That thought struck me, and many of my colleagues, last Friday night as news circulated of his passing at the age of 74.
The fact that Tommy lived life to the full will surely be a source of some consolation to his family and friends at a difficult time like this.His spirit of adventure was second to none.
Thanks for the memories Tommy.

- MF