Since the mid-1980’s Paul Seawright, a native of Belfast, has made incisive photographic work about the political turmoil – ‘The Troubles’ – in Northern Ireland. Whilst his subject matter parallels that of the photojournalist, his approach is allusive rather than documentary. He does not depict easy narratives, nor record the evidence or atrocities or political unrest, but uses the camera as a tool to isolate and draw attention to detail, revealing the paradoxes and complexities that lie beneath the media-saturated façade. This exhibition brings together works from Sectarian Murder, Police Force, Cages and Fires, bodies of work that define the artist’s elliptical approach to the documentary genre, and which still articulate a powerful and unnerving understanding of the sectarian conflict, endemic in Northern Ireland.
Paul Seawright Early Works Ffotogallery Wales 2003
