Peacebuilding a shared Northern Irish society
I found myself with spare time before the bus commute home, so I popped over to Belfast Exposed, where I knew there was a exhibition of participants in its Stage 3 training photography courses. Coincidentally, I discovered as I walked in that there was a session of portfolio reviews. About half a dozen tables on... Continue Reading →
What happens when you ask an online chat room how to make a home? In an interview-style format with about 50 people attending, Belfast Exposed Curator Ciara Hickey asked artist Jan McCullough to share her journey. Home Instruction Manual is the product of the Internet. That is, while Jan McCullough is the author of this... Continue Reading →
Bringing our own lens: Visualising conflict in Palestine by Allan LEONARD 15 March 2016 The rear room at Common Grounds Cafe was the venue for a display of three types of imagery — participatory, documentary, and expository — for the Imagine! Festival of Ideas & Politics event, Visualising Conflict in Palestine, which was attended by... Continue Reading →
A lexicon of conflict: Paul Seawright exhibition “Things Left Unsaid” by Allan Leonard 1 October 2015 On the surface, the images shown in Paul Seawright’s work, “Things Left Unsaid”, are just a series of American television news stations. And in a tour that the Belfast-based artist provided as part of Community Relations Week, Mr Seawright... Continue Reading →
The theme of this year’s Belfast Photo Festival is convergence – the act of artists mixing other forms of art, such as performance and sculpture, with photographic image making. A panel discussion, hosted at Belfast Exposed, explored these boundaries and overlaps, and mooted the way forward. Francis Hodgson, a photography critic for the Financial Times,... Continue Reading →
As part of the Ulster Festival of Art & Design at Ulster University, I dropped in on a 30-minute photobook lab. Inside a pop-up style workspace on the ground floor of the Belfast campus were a few tables strewn with miscellaneous books, magazines and newspapers. The objective was to create your own photobook with these... Continue Reading →
“Don’t see migrant community as ‘them and us’”: High Sheriff of Belfast by Allan LEONARD 6 March 2015 At a launch event for a photography exhibition at Belfast City Hall, the High Sheriff of Belfast, Councillor Gareth McKee, told the audience not to see the migrant community in Northern Ireland with a ‘them and us’... Continue Reading →
Recently my brother asked me where were my favourite photo locations. I don't know if "favourite" is the right word. Photography encompasses many genres, and photojournalists let their curiosity and ambitions take them wherever they're called, whether on assignments or self-motivated journeys. My photography journey started at home, in the rural village in northwest Ohio. I'd... Continue Reading →
God can sanctify photography. With a poem by Pope Leo XIII, Colin Ford explains the basis for how Irish Jesuit Frank Browne acquired a camera from his bishop uncle, at the age of 17, and kept making images throughout his priestly life. Browne took his camera everywhere. His early trips to Europe were the apparent... Continue Reading →
To mark its 30th anniversary, Belfast Exposed has organised an extensive exhibition of photographic work, displayed both at its premises on Donegall Street as well as at The MAC. The exhibition — Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography — "focuses on the growth of new, fine art documentary practices, more often produced for the gallery... Continue Reading →
At the start of 2012, I resolved to take a photo a day, a 365-day project (actually, 366 days with the leap year). I did it. Most of the time the daily image presented itself subconsciously, whether walking to or from my office. In fact, when an opportunity presented itself whilst driving, I'd pull the... Continue Reading →
Recently I took a one-day course on street photography, held at Belfast Exposed. My motivation was that while I learned how to use a camera 30 years ago (printing from black and white film shot in a Canon AE1 Program), I have been wanting to go beyond taking competent publicity shots and colourful tourist scenes.... Continue Reading →