Then and now.
About
Paula T Nolan
Paula T Nolan is an award-winning Irish photographer, visual artist, and graphic designer based in Dublin, Ireland.
As a photographer, she is best known for serving as the inaugural Photographer-in-Residence for the National Library of Ireland (NLI) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2024 to 2025. In this role, Paula created a landmark project titled ‘ReViewing Ireland: A Photo Study of Ireland’s Environment’, which heavily focused on documenting human interaction with the climate crisis, capturing a historic time capsule of Ireland's shifting environmental issues.
After attending the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), she has worked as a graphic designer, specialising in all areas of design for print, with a speciality in magazines and books. She has worked with a diverse range of print media including Hot Press magazine, The Phoenix Magazine, the Farmers Journal and Jesuits in Ireland book publishing house. This diversity has been an education in itself.
Paula has designed many large-format ‘coffee-table’ books, most notably using photographs from the renowned Father Browne SJ Collection. This was a particular inspiration to take up photography herself in 2013. Her years of creating designs for print media, coupled with a life-long love of historic and contemporary fine art, meant that she had a well-developed eye for composition before she picked up a camera.
In 2014, her photograph 'Napkins' was purchased by the State Art Collection. Two years later, it was included amongst 82 artworks from the State Art Collection for the ‘Portraits of a Nation’ exhibition in the Farmleigh Gallery. The exhibition included works spanning five centuries from 1631 to 2016 and represented fifty-four artists. ‘Napkins’ was subsequently selected for the 2019/20 Office of Public Works and Northern Ireland Civil Service Collection annual touring exhibition.
In October 2021, Paula exhibited alongside Michael Corrigan in ‘Double Exposure’, in a two-person exhibition with The Paul Kane Gallery. She also exhibited in The Paul Kane Gallery Christmas Exhibition in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. In April 2025 she was included in a Paul Kane Gallery group exhibition titled ‘Treasures’.
Paula’s photograph, 'Not Long Left: Grandfather with Grandsons', was selected for the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) Annual Exhibition 2018; her photograph, ‘Tea & Coffee Kitchen: Manresa Jesuit Novitiate, Birmingham’ was selected for the RHA 2019 Annual Exhibition; a duotone photograph from Project Flotsam/1 was selected for the RHA 2021 Annual Exhibition; ‘Heron on the Tolka’ – a series of heron photos taken in a particular late winter evening light – was selected for the RHA 2022 Annual Exhibition, and ‘Calling Time on Edge Hardware’ was selected for the RHA 2024 Annual Exhibition.
In 2024 Paula was selected via open call as the first NLI/EPA Photographer-in-Residence, running from April 2024 to May 2025. Her project is titled ‘ReViewing Ireland: A Photo Study of Ireland’s Environment 2024-2025. In early 2026, her extensive collection of nearly 400 curated digital photographs and 135,000 words in captions became permanently available via the National Photographic Archive.
In September 2025, the collaboration between the National Library of Ireland (NLI) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the Photographer-in-Residence project ‘ReViewing Ireland’ won the prestigious ESB Creative Sustainability Award at the Business to Arts Awards. To quote Business to Arts:-
“This year, the inaugural ESB Creative Sustainability Award was unveiled, with the winner celebrating an exceptional interdisciplinary partnership between the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Library of Ireland, and artist Paula T. Nolan, Photographer in Residence. Marking the EPA’s 30th anniversary, this project creates a visual record of Ireland’s changing environment, blending artistic expression with environmental documentation to offer the public a meaningful way to engage with ecological change through beauty, memory, and place.”
Agent: The Paul Kane Gallery
Website Design: Paula T Nolan