Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography at Belfast Exposed and the MAC this summer highlights the medium as a highly-charged, critical artform that constantly questions its own role in the construction of memories, writes Stephanie McBride
Seamus Heaney’s opening lines from his 1972 poem Wintering Out spoke of the immediacy of the conflict in Northern Ireland at the time:
This morning from a dewy motorway
I saw the new camp for the internees:
A bomb had left a crater of fresh clay
In the roadside, and over in the trees
Machine-gun posts defined a real stockade.
There was that white mist you get on a low ground
And it was déjà-vu, some film made
Of Stalag 17, a bad dream with no sound
Since then, artists have responded in many ways to the conflict and peace process, and the ongoing transformations of physical, political and visual geographies. But photography, perhaps more than any other artform, has had to negotiate the glut and ubiquity of daily news images of violence, compressed into convenient, digestible narratives that flatten out complexity and context.
As a building commissioned by a State entity charged with the stewardship of a precarious energy resource, Bord Gáis Network Services Centre warrants some reflection on its relevance as a benchmark and path-finder, writes Seán O’Laoire
Nigel Everett recounts how John Annan Bryce and his architect Harold Peto transformed Garinish Island into one of the most important gardens in Europe