Abstract

Belfast 1988, 2008 is a series of six photographs that was produced for an exhibition at the Third Space Gallery, Belfast in October, 2008. The number of photographs and the scale of the images were determined by the relatively small size of the gallery space.The series includes two previously unseen photographs that the artist made in 1988. The remaining photographs in the exhibition were made in the summer of 2008. This group of photographs engages in a critical dialogue around the value of documentary photography and reportage. In 1988 the intention was not to produce an historical record of how the streets of Belfast looked but to find a means of making art that engaged with the complexity of how social space was divided and highly codified. Over the course of twenty years the photographs have acquired an historical value as accidental records of how the physical environment has changed. The photographs made in 2008 were made in response to this phenomenon, in locations that have remained unchanged and free of urban regeneration and redevelopment. They exist somewhere between the reality of the contemporary location and a memory of Belfast in 1988. The series of photographs confronts the paradoxical unreliability of documentary photography but remains engaged with the artistic potential of the medium. The work was produced using a hybrid of digital and traditional photographic processes, further complicating the relationship between authenticity and the historical document.