LAUSR

At these events, six artists and 28 contributors from many diverse backgrounds and different political perspectives were invited to critically consider and discuss the paired photographic work of John Duncan and Kai-Olaf Hesse, Mary McIntyre and David Farrell, and Paul Seawright and Malcolm Craig Gilbert. The idea of the book was inspired by the author’s own research into photography in Northern Ireland after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which brought to an end the 30 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland known as ‘The Troubles’. Premised on the desire to move beyond the simplified and often naive narratives of consumer identity and sectarianism, the publication – with a critical preface by Mick Wilson – acknowledges that notions of locality, place, territory, landscape, and the very idea of the public and the private, remain contested terms. More than that, a number of significant, more general questions are raised, about the nature of photography and its potential to report by challenging our notions of place.