Muristek
As his series of images of mid-80s Northern Ireland is republished, the photographer talks about being a stranger in a contested landscape and his elliptical approach to representing the conflict
Paul Graham visited Northern Ireland for the first time in 1984. “I was in my mid-20s and curious,” he says. “I wanted to see for myself what was happening there.” Travelling around the province in a rental car, he was immediately struck by the gentle beauty of the countryside, but also felt “a vague sense of fraughtness and unease” as he passed through villages bedecked with either union jacks or Irish tricolours.
Graham had already made two acclaimed books of quietly observant documentary photography in the early 80s: A1 – The Great North Road, for which he travelled the entire length of the route, and Beyond Caring, which was shot in unemployment offices around the UK. The social landscape of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, though, was a different kind of challenge for a young photographer who, as he now puts it, “wanted to find out what was going on there in my name”.
Graffiti, Ballysillan Estate, Belfast, 1986.
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