Troubled Land - Iconic project carried out at the height of the "troubles",
Troubled Land deals with the small but insistent signs of political division
inscribed in the landscape of Northern Ireland. At the heart of the Irish conflict is
finds the land - who owns it, who controls it, whose history it expresses.
Paul Graham's quietly radical book keeps this material truth to
spirit, because it uniquely combines landscape and music photography.
conflicts, seducing us with bucolic views in which details
revealing signs only gradually appear: painted sidewalks,
soldiers or helicopters in the distance, flags and graffiti, roads
splattered with paint, each of them tacitly aligning that spot on
his republican or loyalist allegiance. Pastoral photographs of fields
greens and hedges turn out to be images of conflict and dispute - despite
the stability of the photographic frame and the clarity of Graham's vision, he
This is an unstable land. Originally published in 1986, Troubled Land is
reprinted here for the first time in thirty-five years. Controversial at the time
for his use of color and his refusal to follow the clichés of
photojournalism, this book played a vital role in providing a new
perspective on the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland and left a lasting impact
on landscape photography, suggesting how it might engage
into politics and society rather than escaping from them.
\nSigned.
