Francis Mary Hegarty Browne was born in Cork in 1880. His mother died of puerperal fever within days of the birth and when, a decade later, his father drowned, Frank and his seven siblings were taken in by their uncle Robert, Bishop of Cloyne. It was Robert who gave the 17-year-old Frank his first camera in 1897. He was about to set off on a European tour with his brother William, and so the gift was timely. But when he returned it was to enter the Jesuit novitiate, and, having to renounce all worldly goods, he was forced to surrender the camera until he graduated two years later.