Belfast - IRA memorial

Glorifying terrorist murders is abhorant to any civilised society. These people have butchered innocent men, women, children and babies. Tony

Brook Hill said:

Glorifying terrorist murders is abhorant to any civilised society. These people have butchered innocent men, women, children and babies. Tony

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Thanks for comment. Glorifying terrorist murders was genuinely not my intention (in fact, see the photo that is posted next to this in the gallery). The project is an attempt to document the extreme tribalism that is owned by each community. It is hard to understand (or stomach), but the facts are that both these communities glory in their own terrorist organisations and are proud in what they think they achieved. In the course of work on this project, I met an old woman who saw me photograph an IRA hunger strikers wall mural and told me proudly her son was one of the hunger strikers and starved himself to death, and on the Shankill Road side a man who, after a conversation at a bus stop, proudly showed me a UVF terrorist tattoo, and said he was a UVF member when younger. Both eye-popping events, but they illustrate my point well. Although I am Scottish, I've got family from Northern Ireland, and spent a large part of my childhood in Belfast. I have a strange outsider-insider viewpoint that hopefully informs the photographs.

thank you for sharing these images; they are poignant and your approach has been delicate while stark. much appreciated.

Istead of showing these smiling faces you should show the results of their handiwork, mutilated bodies splattered about the street, decapitated heads rolloing in the gutter, distraught children who have lost the mothers. Their actions, both IRA and UVF, are on a parr with the Nazi death camps, Pol Pot etc. These IRA terrorists are still active in carrying out their horrendous deeds and all of us in the UK walk in fear of beiing bombed in the street from them and other active extremist groups. Any slightest hint of support or justification of these activities increases the chance of further slaughter and it is more than irresponsible for anyone to travel down this route.

Brook Hill said:

Istead of showing these smiling faces you should show the results of their handiwork, mutilated bodies splattered about the street, decapitated heads rolloing in the gutter, distraught children who have lost the mothers. Their actions, both IRA and UVF, are on a parr with the Nazi death camps, Pol Pot etc. These IRA terrorists are still active in carrying out their horrendous deeds and all of us in the UK walk in fear of beiing bombed in the street from them and other active extremist groups. Any slightest hint of support or justification of these activities increases the chance of further slaughter and it is more than irresponsible for anyone to travel down this route.

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Thanks for reply. This picture is not an apology for anything, it's a document of part of one community's identity. It's an identity I'm not celebrating, but trying to show as it is. It's a documentary photography project. As I said in an earlier post, take a look at the next picture I posted, which is a plaque in remembrance of a toddler killed by the IRA. I think you've misunderstood how documentary photography works. I also think you are very wide of the mark suggesting irresponsibility. I was born in Belfast, spent a large part of my childhood there and have family I still visit regularly. I unfortunately also have direct family experience of the horrors of the Troubles, so think I have an understanding of the extreme things done in the name of religion and politics..You seem a bit uninformed about the reality of life in Northern Ireland today. The major terrorist organisations on both sides have had ceasefires for a long time, and had independently verified weapons destruction. With a few wobbles, this has largely held since the Good Friday agreement, and a generation of young people has now experienced a largely peaceful environment to grow up in. Not perfect, but a hell of a lot better than things used to be.