TradeNames:From weddings and communions to family portraits and repairing photographs, a Dublin photo studio has seen it all and more, writes Rose Doyle

Eddie Kinane took a big risk when he opened a photographic studio on Berkeley Road, Dublin 7, in September 1960. That's what his daughter Maria says and if anyone knows the business and its history its Maria Kinane.

She runs things today, with energy and elan and the inestimable help of Mercedes Saiz, from Bilbao, who came to work part-time a few years ago and is now a full-time part of the place. Milo, the affable in-house mongrel, is an integral part of things too, sitting in the window and suffering the admiration of passers-by.

"All my Dad rented in the beginning was a reception area and office/studio," Maria says. "The reception was so small," she laughs, an amazed laugh at the space everything used to happen in.

Maria Kinane laughs a lot and gives a lot to life. You can see why people like her taking their photo - and they do. She still uses a hand-built Hasselblad for portraits, working on every pose individually, not taking the final picture until she's completely happy. They use digital too, but Maria is attached to her Hasselblad.

She wasn't always a photographer, even if she was reared to it.

Eddie Kinane paid £4 a week rent when he first opened, "and took in 2/- that first week", says Maria. "It was an awful struggle. It takes a long time to make a name in photography."

But Edward Kinane had a long-growing passion for photography and was not for turning. He was born in Ivar Street, off Manor Street in Stoneybatter, the youngest of a family of 12. His father worked for Guinness and, in time, the family moved to Donnybrook.

His interest in photography started, Maria says, "when he was in the RAF during the war. He served in Italy and was posted to Albania with the War Grave Commission, searching for and photographing lost aircrew. To pass the time, when travelling in Albania, Romania and Yugoslavia, he applied for and got photographic equipment to take landscape pictures. He found he'd a flair."

Edward Kinane got back to Dublin in 1948 and for the next 12 years worked for Guinness. He married Eileen Brooks, from Harolds Cross, and they had two children, Maria and her brother Joseph. Edward Kinane went on taking pictures and by the late 1950s was being asked to take pictures of families and friends and weddings. So he opened the studio in Berkeley Road.

"Guinness was security but he made the leap from a secure job. He was a thrill seeker, my Da," Maria laughs merrily, "known as the 'red devil', maybe because he had red hair. He was hard to please and kind of tough. He was of the generation when women were at home doing slave labour. I got to know him working for him and discovered he'd a very good sense of humour and sense of play."

Maria was a toddler when the business started and doesn't "remember the very beginning. We lived in North Road, Finglas, when it was still a village. I thought we lived in the country and used to pick blackberries around the corner from the house. I remember Dad talking about here and I remember being aware of photography and the work he did from an early age. At Christmas he would take photographs to put on calendars and I remember Joe and myself at the diningroom table sticking the hanging tab on the calendar and pasting on the calendar part. Dad did everything else and we did the dirty work!"

When she was in school in nearby Eccles Street, with the Dominican nuns, Maria would drop in to help. In 1967 extra wedding pictures (8ins by 6ins) cost 7/6d and post cards (5ins by 3ins) were 4/6d. "He usually worked alone, though occasionally he would have a student in doing work experience," say Maria. "His first job was to copy a picture, and to this day that's our speciality. We're known for our copying and restoration. He worked so hard, racing from church wedding to receptions. He had to make a living. It really was tough but he loved it. He was very tenacious and didn't give up. My mother was apprehensive all the time. She was shy and it was unsettling for her because she'd a family to rear," Maria nods sagely, "and children don't come cheap."

The family, in time, sold the Finglas house and moved to Glasnevin Park, "so as to keep afloat. But he made it work and by 1989 when I joined him here he was very busy and well-known."

Maria Kinane had been living in Navan, working on the Meath Chronicle, when she joined her father for "a short stay and never left. I'm 18 years here now and seven years ago I came to live here too."

When she joined her father she was "put straight away into the dark room. Dad still took portraits and I did counter work and passports and black-and-white printing and the retouching of old photographs by hand with tiny brushes and special inks." She sighs. "You can't buy the inks anymore, it's all changing. The manufacturers of dark room equipment are few and far between now."

It was five years before Eddie Kinane allowed his daughter take photographs. "My first was on a communion Saturday. Dad was at a wedding and left me in charge and the communions began coming in! He was a great believer in throwing you in at the deep end."

Her first ever picture was of a "little girl and I was pleased with it, relieved it looked well. The family were pleased with it too. I'm very critical of my own work. You're learning all the time in this job, learning about your own style. You have to pose people, interact with them so as they're comfortable with you."

Eileen Kinane died in 1996 and Edward Kinane died in 2004. The business, in Maria's caring and capable hands has moved on and changed - notably with the introduction of digital, which Maria likes. "It's brought our copying and restoration work to a new high. We get to know our customers, do what they want. Because we do it in-house our standards are high.When someone comes in and says 'I heard you can do anything' you know what's coming - a picture in shreds! When a customer comes in with a picture there's always a story, tears sometimes as they remember dead people. Some people just call to say hello."

This is easy to believe: there's an air of fun and conviviality at 34 Berkeley Road. "Maria found me through FÁS," Mercedes takes a break from a digital job. "We got on well from the beginning. She's an amazing woman and great to work for. I wouldn't change for the world; she's a very special lady. I'm here three years now and if we were every going to kill one another we'd have done it by now!"

Mercedes is special herself: 10 years living in Dublin, currently in "Ballybrack which, I love. I love Dublin 3 people".

Maria says she and Mercedes are "on equal footing. Our jobs are interchangeable and we get on very well". She says, too, that "the major change is in the immigrants we photograph. About six years ago I took a photograph of an African family, mammy, daddy and baby. It was a powerful photo and we printed a 20ins by 16ins, and put it in the window. People from everywhere began coming in. People come in too who had their picture taken here 30 years ago! My Dad used to say 'there's none so queer as folk' and he was right, in a good way. We love our customers."

Mercedes says they meet amazing people, that "it's a great place and I've learned an awful lot.We've changed to the digital world and survived. It's so good to see a business like this still afloat."