Post Picturesque: Photographing Ireland

Anna Rackard is an award-winning production designer for film and television as well as a fine art photographer. She studied architecture, design communications, and photography and holds degrees from Dublin Institute of Technology and the Institute of Art, Design and Technology. Through photography, Rackard has explored the Irish countryside, referencing photographic conventions and demographic change in her Postcards and Farmers series. Fish Stone Water, a book on Irish holy wells, was published in 2001 with coauthor Liam O’Callaghan; she co-directed An Tobar, a documentary on the same subject, in 2004. Under into Somewhere, featuring intimate images of sleepers, was presented in a solo Dublin exhibition in 2016.  

Rackard’s film projects include Love and Friendship (2016), Stella Days (2011), and Ondine (2009); she won an Irish Film and Television Award in 2010 and again in 2012.

Rackard has contributed her design talents to television dramas including A Dangerous Fortune (ZDF), Foyle’s War (ITV), and George Gently (BBC).