March 2007 Archives

OUT OF THE DARKNESS

40 Years of life in Northern Ireland though the Lens

TAKE a detour to the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Ormeau Avenue for a quick look at a major photographic exhibition of images of Northern Ireland over the past forty years. The Northern Ireland Press Photographers Association exhibition reflects dramatic changes over the last four decades.

  For most Ulsterfolk between the ages of twenty and fifty, the Troubles have been the dominant feature of their formative years. Everyone’s lives were shaped by the reality of political and sectarian violence in the background.  Almost everyone in this small country knew somebody who was injured or killed by one or another armed faction.  The conflict determined where we live, where we worked, where we socialised and where we dared to travel.

  Most of us have visions in our heads that we will never forget of terrible scenes we either witnessed for ourselves or recall from television or from newspaper photographs. Most date from the height of the Troubles in the early seventies.

  Out of Darkness, the exhibition’s apt title, hints at what may become happier times ahead and the hope that the horrors experienced here have been put behind us for good.

  The Troubles images seem to be arranged chronologically. The first image is of civil rights demonstrators and shoppers alike sprayed by RUC water cannons in a Derry street in 1968. Another shows a very young and slime John Hume addressing a large crowd on Craigavon Bridge.

  As the conflict worsened, the images get darker. A grim-faced Ambulance man carries the tiny blanket-wrapped body of a baby from a bombed out Shankill Road furniture showroom.  A tarred and feathered youth stands tied to a lamppost, a punishment for housebreaking from the Official IRA.  Father Edward Daly waving a white hankie at soldiers as a fatally injured man is carried off to hospital on ‘bloody Sunday’. He famous silhouette of OIRA icon Joe McCann taken in Eliza Street as the Inglis bakery burns down in the background.  The dramatic moment in July 1984 when John Downs clutches his chest as he was struck at close range by an RUC constable firing plastic bullets.  The poignant picture of Father Alex Reid knelling to pray over the mutilated body of one of two army corporals murdered at a republican funeral.

  Given the many deaths in the Troubles, it’s only natural that the exhibition should feature a number of funerals. There are IRA hunger-strikers and victims of the IRA, there’s the funeral of the veteran republican Joe Cahill; the victims of the “Real IRA” atrocity in Omagh and one of the RIRA’s own leaders, Joe O’Connor who was killed by the Provisionals in 2004.

  The most moving funeral image is one of two policemen murdered in Lurgan in 1997.  A young boy – framed by the arm of one mourner resting on the shoulder of a pallbearer – weeps uncontrollably by his daddy’s coffin. It’s heartbreaking.

  It’s not all grim, however. There are happier images too.  Brian Keenan in 1990 is welcomed home at Belfast City Hall after his years spent chained to a radiator as a hostage in Beirut.  Barry McGuigan touring the centre of Belfast in an open-topped bus after one of his boxing victories. The late, great Joey Dunlop on a pushbike.  George Best putting one in the net for Northern Ireland. ‘That goal’ from David Healy against England in September 2005. A dynamic crunch tackle by a Cavan player on Down’s Conor Laverty at the 2006 Ulster Championship.

  In happier times, there are two dramatic weather-related images: a bread van negotiating its way through crashing waves along a Co Down coastal road and a view from Black Head of a thunderstorm over he North Channel.

  Roisín McDonough, Chief Executive of the Arts Council got it spot-on when she said, “This is a fascinating exhibition by some of Northern Ireland’s best photographers. The photographs are perhaps more remarkable because they capture moments in an extraordinary passage in the history of Northern Ireland. Photographers are now recording the many positive aspects of our cultural life, the arts, concerts, business life and sporting events as well as the personal stories and achievements of ordinary Northern Irish people going about their business.”

  Out of the Darkness only lasts until March 24 but the illustrated catalogue is good value for £10.00.

Admission is free, s hurry along to the OBG.  You won’t regret it!