Of Stone or Moss

On the 23rd June 2016 just over half of the population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, voted to leave the European Union. The run up to that vote was fraught with conjecture and disinformation for many - not least regarding the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as what would become only land border between the United Kingdom and Europe.

The relationship between Britain, Ireland and the northern part of it, is one of hundreds of years of political and social turmoil; which history demonstrates to have spilled over into violence and conflict more than once. Most recently and most relevantly, the thirty-year sectarian conflict over the reunification of Ireland and thus the separation of Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom. Principally engaged in the conflict were the British armed forces, Northern Irish security forces, extremist republicans and extremist loyalists. More than 3,000 people died during this conflict.

Modern Northern Ireland is not a land without problems, but life there is a far sight better than what is used to be. No longer are cars stopped, bags searched and bullets fired along its border with the Republic, to the south. There is normality in the banality; roads blend seamlessly into one, petrol stations have taken the place of encampments - bridges the place of barricades. However, this peace may be in jeopardy with the need to separate the United Kingdom with the European Union and its Single market. Barriers for goods checks once again become bombing targets for those whose ideologies deem it right to do so.

Of Stone or Moss, is a photographic exploration of the border separating Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; its troubled past, complex present and - in the wake of Brexit - its uncertain future. Imagery from official military archives and from the personal archives of British soldiers deployed in Northern Ireland themselves, are combined with photographs of the contemporary landscape and the people who inhabit it. Both the physical liminal space of the border itself, and the liminal status of its future are visually explored; black and white is mixed with colour, as archive imagery is mixed with contemporary, blending past and present - a past which could become future, should the politicians leading Brexit let it so.