BORDER PHOTOGRAPHS, 25th MAY 2018

On the 25th of May, 2018, Ireland voted to Repeal the 8th Amendment. As the votes were being cast, I decided to take some photographs on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, along the Strabane/Lifford bridge.

The landslide victory for the Yes vote, one which shows how Ireland is finally ready to dump its image as a bastion of the Catholic church, also signifies just how backwards Northern Ireland is on this (and other) matters amidst extensive religious influence.

It’s difficult to discuss these images without taking into consideration the implication of religion as a political tool, one that now sees the ultra-rightwing party DUP now stubbornly at odds with both Ireland and the rest of the UK. I find this is particularly damning concerning the immediacy of Brexit: we currently have two weeks with no solution in sight. One can only hope that the current debacle will shine new light on the political darkness of Northern Ireland (on both sides of the religious divide) that was very much lacking in the run-up to the Brexit vote a few years ago.

MY FAVOURITE PHOTOGRAPH

This is my favourite photograph. I found it on a Facebook group for old photos from my hometown, and I don't know who took it or even who the kids are. It looks like it's from the 1970s.

In the image we have seven kids, presumably friends, posing to have their picture taken while a British army helicopter is being directed to land in a nearby field. You get a real sense of the event, of how this would be a time for mum or dad to run and get the camera out. It makes you wonder what the actual circumstances were.

This kind of scene became a familiar sight when I was growing up in the late 80s and early 90s. I recall how, as a kid, my friends would approach soldiers when they walked down our street, asking them to see their guns, spy down the aim or the scope. Apparently, they always had sweets or biscuits. Soldiers in our border village was a familiar sight, and when you didn't know otherwise, you just accepted it as the norm.

It's only on later reflection when conversing with an old friend, that I realised how absurd it all was.

"You know the soldiers only talked to us because they knew they wouldn't be as much of a target standing beside a kid."

There's naivety in this photo. Perhaps it was something to do with how my village has always been mixed religion, or because it's from a time before the British army was a familiar sight and the full horror of the troubles was yet to be manifest.

In conclusion, there are many reasons why this is my favourite photograph, but perhaps the most cogent reason is the strong juxtaposition of two themes:

The naivety of kids, of the community, of the government, the childish fascination with war, versus the brutal reality of what was to come with growing up, culturally, developmentally and as a country.