TradeNames: From four-shot weddings in the 1950s to 400-shot 'events' today, a photo studio on Dorset Street is still snapping the city, writes Rose Doyle

Frank Gavin Photography has been something of a landmark on Dorset Street for more than half a century now, highly visible and known for the delightful portraits forever on display in its street level window.

That window has made all the difference. Frank Gavin's was the first, and for a long time only, photographic studio in the city at eye and street level, breaking the mould which traditionally put photography studios either in basements or upstairs.

Frank spent his first nine years in business in a basement himself, all the time wanting to be where he could catch passing trade, where people could see his work, know what to expect when they came to him to have the important dates in their lives recorded in pictures.

He got it right with the move. His pictures, and now those of his son, Joe, fill family frames and albums city wide. Joe and Fr Frank are happily convinced the business is more than here to stay. It's got another "50 or 150 years in it", Joe says.

The fact of its business and family life being interchangeable has made for a remarkable story within the story of Frank Gavin Photography. The man who started it all, who built the business from less than scratch, married, had seven children, reared them by taking pictures for a living when photographers were "lower class citizens" is now a priest. He's baptised eight of his grandchildren, officiated at the marriage ceremony of one of his sons.

But this, and the rest of the story, is best told in sequence.

"We've been here in some shape or form since 1953," Frank Gavin says, not without pride. He's 77, relaxed in a sofa in the reception area at 89 Lower Dorset Street, full lives behind him and a bit to go yet.

His father, Jack Gavin, was an electrician and his mother, Bridget, "a saint. I was born on Fleming Road, Drumcondra. There were nine of us. I came to photography when I went to work for my brother, Richard, who had a photography place on Stephen's Green called R C Gavin. It's good to work for a brother but you don't get paid! Richard always liked taking photographs. He'd been in the army and took a lot during the Emergency.

"It was hard making a living from photography in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Then I met my wife, Noreen - God be good to her - at a Christmas party in my mother's house. She was a lovely girl. I fell for her like a ton of bricks."

Noreen, within a few years, had persuaded Frank to go into business on his own. Richard told him he "wouldn't last a day" if he did but Frank, young, hard-working, talented and with Noreen behind him, rented a basement studio recently vacated at 89A Dorset Street Lower. The year was 1953.

"It was a hole in the ground," Frank says. "I was told I'd never get a shilling out of it. I rented it for 2/6d a week. I didn't see light for about nine years."

There are any amount of pictures, artifacts and account books from those early years. Accounts from 1953 show a Mr F Maleady got married in Aughrim Street Church and paid a total of £6. 15.0d for 18 pictures, mounted. A Mr Walter Basquill paid £6.0.0d for 16 copies. In 1956 a wedding in Sandymount church went on to the Four Courts Hotel for the reception and paid £3.0.10d for a dozen pictures.

"I used go to all the churches looking for work," Frank says. "Weddings were small then, often at 6.30am or 7am, too, and people didn't book photographers. It was first come first served when it came to the work. I was thrown out of more weddings and churches trying to get a shilling to feed the family!"

By the early 1970s he was able to buy the building which is today's premises for £3,100.00. Next door to the basement, it had been a sweet shop owned by one Hervey Masterson. Frank bought the lot; two storeys over ground level, freehold.

"I knocked down the place, completely refurbished it and put a studio upstairs. I did away the front steps because I wanted people to walk straight in. It made me the first photographer at street level and business took off dramatically," he says.

Joe, Frank's first born came in to the business at 17, straight from school, and says they went from doing 300 weddings a year to 500 in the first 12 months of the new-look Gavins.

Demand, in those days, was limited to what Frank calls "the two, four, group and car picture. Two was the happy couple, the best man and bridesmaid were added for the four, the group was everyone and the car was with a foot on the running board of the hired vehicle. If they were a wealthy couple you might have to go to the airport, when you were allowed right onto the apron."

He and Noreen lived and reared their seven offspring - Joe, John, Francis, Richard, Gillian, Sarah and Noeleen - in Collins Park, Donnycarney.

Joe says he always wanted to come into the business. As a child he took pictures, as a teenager he did weddings with Fr Frank, learned all he knows working with Frank and other photographers over the years. His brother, Francis, after a time as a professional footballer, helped develop the business for 12 years. He is now Geha, his own business on the Malahide Road.

Noreen Gavin died in 1985. She was 55. Frank's life changed when she died, he says.

"I was always interested in the church," he says, "if Noreen hadn't come along I'd probably have joined it earlier. When she died I knew I wanted to give the rest of my life to God. My mother was a living saint and it was her great regret that none of her family went on for the church. Two of my brothers knocked on the door and when it didn't open ran away! I went into the priesthood for her sake."

He went a couple of times to Lough Derg, spoke to priests he knew and, eventually, went off to Rome to train in the Beada College there for five years. Under the auspices of the Diocese of Nottingham he first worked as a priest in St Mary's, in Derby, then spent seven years as parish priest in the village of Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire for seven years.

"It suited him," Joe laughs, "he was his own boss again. He put his entrepreneurial skills to work too and raised money for a new parish hall. He left a great legacy there behind him."

When Frank Gavin retired at 75 he took on the chaplaincy of a nursing home in Derby. A slight heart problem a year ago brought him home to the Sybil Hill nursing home in Raheny where he's now looked after by the Sisters of the Poor - "and back among his family of 19 grandchildren",Joe adds.

Frank Gavin stopped taking pictures when he became a priest. "I wanted to give it 100 per cent," he says.

Photography, Joe Gavin says, has changed dramatically over the years. But, eight-time winners of both Fuji and Kodak annual awards, the company was never about to stand still. From the two, four and group selection of earlier years, Frank Gavin Photography has moved to taking some 400 shots per wedding.

"Photography is now a lifestyle thing," Joe explains, "an album has a whole design on each page.They're story pages really, with montages, collages, all digitally manipulated. There's no chemistry now, no dark room. I spend a lot more time at a computer, but it's worth it."

In 1996 Joe Gavin "invested again in the premises, put in a new shop front and more. My Dad drummed into us that the premises should be kept well and we should dress and present ourselves well too. We're determined to stick with Dorset Street. There's great development potential here."