In early 2023, RRB Photobooks presents Kingdom of Hounds, a new publication by documentary photographer Tony O'Shea. Born in County Kerry, Ireland, in 1947, O'Shea returned to his home county each year to follow hunting with Kerry beagles.
 
Among Ireland's oldest native dog breeds, Kerry beagles are bred and trained by local hunters. As prominent in the images as in the community, the hounds demonstrate their strong bloodlines: plunging into powerful river currents, leaping high hedges and traversing rough terrain, intent on their task.
 
Photographed over thirty years, the hunters are O'Shea's neighbours and friends, giving him an insider's perspective. Shaped by Kerry's harsh landscape, many come from families that have bred and trained hounds for generations, with rivalries between neighbouring hunts just as longstanding.
 
Regarded as one of Ireland's foremost contemporary photographic artists, O'Shea seeks deeper truths about how people live. In Kingdom of Hounds, he offers a local view of hunting's complexities. Through gruelling weather, competitive tensions and celebrations, his sensitive photographs reveal intimate moments in a community united by a deeply rooted tradition.
 
"O'Shea combines the approach of a European poetic documentary tradition—an empathetic, sometimes almost Beckettian sense of the absurd—with an anthropologist's eye for social realities. These forceful, eloquent images capture a country undergoing profound change, while securing his place in the canon of Irish photography." —Photo Museum Ireland