22/11/05 Seminar Information part 3

In the summer I spent 4 days navigating around the Irish border on a moped. My goal was to visit every point where the border intersects a road, no small task given the shear number of B and C class roads in the North of Ireland. These border lands where places to avoid when I was young. Regular reports on BBC Northern Ireland spoke of violence among these areas, of hatred between neighbours with differing beliefs, of murders. Border crossing points where heavily fortified by the British army until the peace agreements of the late 1990’s. The complete visual decommissioning of these border checkpoints was part of the peace agreements. I had a desire to navigate these foreboding lands of my youth, to let the landscape wash over me, to become immersed within it. What I found was the changing rhythm of a compellingly landscape, although I was nearly always aware of its darker underside, not so visible in these times of “peace”, but still just as real.
This initial visit was meant to be mostly about the experience but as I travelled and made photographs I became interested in the straight colour photography typology that was emerging.