Hanne T. Fisker, photographer

The soulful black & white portrait of Luka Bloom in my short profile of Bloom is a photograph taken by Hanne T. Fisker, shot in Hanne’s Cottage—her home in the Fanore region of the Burren. Hanne rents out the two extra bedrooms in the cottage, and I stayed in one of them for a couple of days (a young musician from Iowa was renting the cottage’s other room).

Hanne is originally from Denmark, and for a number of years, she lived a nomadic life, bouncing from place to place, determined to take in as much life experience as possible. But when she arrived in Doolin, the cliffside Burren town that is a hub for traditional Irish music, she told me, “I thought maybe this is the place to put my suitcase down.” She worked in the local music business while also doing photo shoots throughout the Burren area.

Hanne shares that her best work tends to happen “after I’ve walked in the Burren for hours and really observed and felt the place—I almost feel an invitation, coming from the landscape, to take a photograph.”

While exploring the area on photo shoots, she spied a little cottage, available for a modest price, and scraped up the means to acquire it—then fixed it up and made it a sideline business, to augment her photographic work.

When I stayed at Hanne’s Cottage, I told her that I like to write in unusual places—castles, churches, treehouses. She suggested I try writing in an old tool shed located on her property. The space faced out onto an amazing view, so I set up a little chair and table between the opened double doors and wrote there for hours, until the mosquitoes chased me into the cottage (where my room was also a good place to write, if less scenic).

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(These two photos are mine, not Hanne’s!)

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If you’re interested in possibly staying at Hanne’s Cottage, you can learn more about it at hannescottage.com. And you can see more of Hanne’s photography at htfisker.com.