Background
Alen Brasil MacWeeney was born on September 1, 1939, in Dublin, Ireland.
Alen Brasil MacWeeney was born on September 1, 1939, in Dublin, Ireland.
In 1961 MacWeeney came to the United States. In that year he studied at Alexey Brodovitch Design Lab.
Since 1964 Alen has done commercial photography, including editorial work for Esquire, Life, Look, New York Times, Mademoiselle, Time-Life Books and Harper's Bazaar. In addition, MacWeeney has done fieldwork in Ireland with Artelia Court from 1966 to 1973, collecting and recording Irish folklore, traditional literature and music. In 1968 he recorded the album, The Traveling People of Ireland.
Using mainly small and medium-format black-and-white, the photographer takes "psychological portraits of people, animals, and landscapes," as well as nudes. His personal work has included New York portraits (1970-present), New York subways (1977-78), conflict in North- ern Ireland (1971), Irish landscapes (1969-72), Irish tinkers (1965-70), Yeats in Ireland (1965- 66), Mexico (1964), and Dublin streets (1963).
His early influences were Anthony Armstrong-Jones, William Klein, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon.