Bushmills
Purple Creative
The Old Bushmills Distillery sits on the north coast of Northern Ireland, a stone's throw from the Giant's Causeway. It is a place where whisky and landscape are difficult to separate.
For this project, I was asked to photograph the people behind Bushmills. The makers and custodians of a whiskey with centuries of history. The brief was about more than simply making beautiful pictures of the liquid. It was about understanding the place, the people and the craft that gives the whisky its character.
One of those people is Colum Egan, who became one of the youngest master distillers in Bushmills' history in 2002. Born in Ireland's barley-growing country, he grew up with an understanding of the raw materials and landscape that would eventually become his working life.
Walking around the distillery with Colum, there is a clear sense of continuity. The copper stills, the warehouses, the casks and the people working among them. Much of the knowledge is not written down. It is learned over years of watching, tasting and understanding what is happening.
The weather is part of it too. On one morning, the rain came down hard enough to send us running from the still house to the warehouses. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of ageing whiskey. Outside, the north coast carried on being the north coast.
There is something satisfying about photographing a place like this. You start with the product, but the deeper you go, the more the story becomes about everything around it. The water. The barley. The weather. The landscape. The buildings. And, most importantly, the people who know how all of those things come together.
That is the part of commercial photography that interests me most. Getting past the polished surface of a brand and finding the people and places that give it meaning.
At Bushmills, that story stretches from the granite landscape of the north coast to the hands that have spent decades turning its ingredients into whiskey.
