An Irish photographer has begun taking parting shots of young Irish emigrants leaving the shores for foreign lands.

Dublin-based David Monahan was featured on the CBS Evening News as he carefully documents the latest wave of emigrants leaving Ireland in the midst of the economic recession.

There is no shortage of subjects, By the end of this year an expected 120,000 people will have left in a two year period.

Monahan poses his subjects against familiar Dublin background scenes

"The idea is to make I suppose a heroic shot, to celebrate the person -- to say they are full of pride, full of dignity. They are going out to do something and they are going to do it well," Monahan told CBS News.

One of his subjects was Aoife O'Donnell a 27-year-old photographer ready to leave for New York and a new life in America.

"I tried applying for jobs, internships," O'Donnell told CBS . "Even unpaid internships. I couldn't get anything. And it's like hitting a brick wall. For two months I went on social welfare and it got really demoralizing."


"There's a huge new wave of immigration going on in my country at the moment, it's palpable, I can just see from my own group of friends that I am probably one of the last people to actually emigrate," said O'Donnell.

And so the inevitable cycle begins anew in Ireland with the old remaining and the young taking flight.

It seems it was ever so.