December 1996, I get my first great job offer for a software engineer position in a small firm located in the Cnit building in La Défense, Paris, which I refused. I had already made my choice and the next day I was flying to Galway where a low wage position was kept for me in E-Maginet, small consultancy firm held by Brendan C. ; 6 months later, the first irish websites were up for small local customers that did not really get what we wre talking about, the company had gone down and the game was over, I switched for money to global corporation Nortel that had been operating electronics in Galway for years and was now quickly migrating its famous call center hardware to internet technologies. But in the mean time we had lots of adventures, including the shooting of a non official movie on the stage of the Great Famine Commemoration Event that was held on the huge property of Noel C.Duggan, in Millstreet, County Cork. At this time (March 2012), these are the only images ever published of the preparation of the concerts that took place after the official celebration where Mary Robinson, president of Ireland, acknowledged the first official apologies of England, by Prime Minister Tony Blair, 150 years later : "The famine was a defining event in the history of Ireland and Britain. It has left deep scars. That one million people should have died in what was then part of the richest and most powerful nation in the world is something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today. Those who governed in London at the time failed their people."
We hired photography professionals under the artistic direction of well established Galway photographer Patrick Tierney (that's the name I remember fot the guy, not quite sure) who worked it well : a 8 minute movie was produced and disapeared after we got a letter from RTE,claiming all rights on the public event and concerts. The funny part is that the movie was designed to be a fiction where I would be, with my friend Sylvain and Philemon, pictured as Bob Dylan fans on a road trip from Galway to Cork. In the end the movie came out as a documentary, Bob Dylan did not make it because he had a heart attack, and I am still searching for the 8 minutes of video tape that have without any doubt travelled in my bags since then. If you find them before me, please drop me a note !