Images of post-conflict Belfast

Abstract

In Catharsis, I explore to what degree the language of the snapshot contributes to or obscures our understanding of time and place, since the idea of knowing someone through their personal images is open to question. Bringing together three elements; family album snaps made in Belfast by my father in the 50’s and 60’s, new documentary images of post-conflict sites which are presently tourist sites made by me and GPS coordinates which serve as a reminder of Belfast's military history, I situate each image in relation to an unspoken memory.

The stark contrast in scale and genre, between the personal snapshots and the conceptually driven documentary images, helps shape an understanding of the gap between the personal and the conceptual, mapping out ritual, marking territory and retracing history. While the family album references a site of personal and social identity, the documentary genre can only point to but never reveal the subtle and often absent history embedded within it.

By engaging the viewer in a dialogue between the familial and the documentary against the fixity of the GPS coordinates, I open up a space to examine the multiple ways photography informs identity, personal memory and social history.

Acknowledgements

“Catharsis: Images of Post-Conflict Belfast” is dedicated to my sister, the actor Kate Somerville Kelly, whose creativity is a continual source of inspiration.

Notes

1 Post-conflict Belfast has a fragile government structure that is in frequent danger of collapse. According to a 2008 Guardian report, since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, some 80 or so peace walls have been erected; before the Agreement, there were 26; most of these in Belfast.

2 I further discuss family photography in relation to memory in “Book, Exhibition, Lecture, Website.”

3 In “Book, Exhibition, Lecture, Website,” I consider how multiple viewing contexts expands the interpretation of this work.