i

i is Eamonn Doyle's self-published debut photobook, a document of elderly residents photographed from above on the streets around Dublin's Parnell Street and Moore Street, and the book that reintroduced street photography as a serious contemporary form for a new generation.

Shot low-angle and often looming over its subjects, inspired in part by the rhythms of Samuel Beckett's prose, the photographs isolate figures against Dublin's pavement and shopfronts, turning ordinary passers-by into monumental, almost sculptural presences. Doyle self-published the book in Dublin in 2014 in an edition of 750 copies; it is the first of a trilogy completed by ON (2015) and End (2016), and it won the Author Book Award at Rencontres d'Arles and a Kraszna-Krausz Book Award.

Doyle, born in Dublin in 1969, spent fifteen years running the D1 Recordings label before returning to photography in 2008 and turning his camera on the same north inner-city streets he grew up around. Martin Parr called i the best street photobook in a decade, and the trilogy's success led to a later career survey, Eamonn Doyle (RM Verlag/Fundación MAPFRE, 2020), and the compilation Made in Dublin (Thames & Hudson).