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Abstract
This article explores photographic representations of the border between the Republic of Ireland and the state of Northern Ireland. This contentious division of the island occurred in 1921 following a War of Independence. It left six of the island’s thirty-two counties under British rule and its creation precipitated a Civil War (1922-1923). Photography has been employed to either undermine or solidify the border’s existence. At various times its visibility was heightened or negated reflecting the political climate. The article will consider the border imagery reproduced in popular magazines such as LIFE and also those created by stock photo-agencies. Mainly consumed by non-Irish audiences, these representations were initially quaint, however, as political and civil unrest grew, and British troops occupied and patrolled the border area, the depictions became more sinister. Border checkpoints and a ‘wild’ countryside teeming with paramilitaries became visual shorthand for this ‘problematic’ space. Recent Fine Art representations of the border in the post-Brexit era will also be considered.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1. Nail, Theory of the Border.
2. Graham, Northern Ireland, 17.
3. Ó Faoláin, I remember, 220.
4. Nash, Lorraine, and Graham, “Putting the Border in Place,” 423.
5. Moore, Birth of the Border.
6. See the following for the details of the Boundary Commission: Hand, “MacNeill and the Boundary Commission,” 201–75; and O’Callaghan, “Old Parchment and Water,” 27–55.
7. Vaughan-Williams, Border Politics.
8. Leary, “A House Divided,” 269–90.
9. This photograph is also reproduced in Toby Harnden’s controversial work: ‘Bandit Country’: The IRA & South Armagh, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999, in which the caption notes that one member of the family becomes an IRA sniper and that another was shot dead by the Royal Marines in 1990.
10. Ziff, The Media and Northern Ireland, 195.
11. Ibid., 199.
12. Fine Art depictions of the Troubles and after are covered by the following: Graham, Northern Ireland; Tuck, After the Agreement; Long, Ghost-Haunted Land; and Legg, Northern Ireland and the Politics of Boredom.
13. McWhirter and Spencer, “Corporal Bell, IRA Target,” 30–36.
14. Graves, “In the Belly of the Pig,” 3.
15. Feldman, “Violence and Vision,” 29.
16. McCann, “The Eye of the Storm,” 33.
17. Freytag, “Border Crossings and Road Cratering.
18. Nail, Theory of the Border, 8.
19. O’Shea, Border Roads 1990–1994.
20. Tóibín and O’Shea, Walking along the Border.
21. Fitzpatrick, “eBay Press Prints,” 8.
22. Purbrick, British Watchtowers, 57.
23. Anderson, “Time Moves Both Ways,” 9–10.
24. Burke, Shooting the Darkness, viii.
25. Barber, “Introduction,” 120.
26. Carville, “Re-Negotiated Territory,” 9.
27. Dickson et al., Shooting the Darkness, 32–33.
28. See Cadwallader, Lethal Allies; and Urwin, A State in Denial.
29. Nolan has also worked with border communities in Carlingford Lough and Bessbrook, South Armagh.
30. Fitzpatrick, “Third Space,” 22.
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Orla Fitzpatrick
Orla Fitzpatrick is a post-doctoral research fellow at Trinity College Dublin, engaged on a project exploring Ireland’s Border Cultures. This project is a Shared Island initiative with Queen’s University Belfast. Her doctoral research related to the Irish photobook, modernity and modernism (Ulster University 2016). She was the Royal Dublin Society Post Doctoral Research scholar in 2021. She has published widely on Irish photographic, design and material culture. Recent articles include an analysis of an Irish Republican Army surveillance album, dating from the Irish War of Independence, which appeared in the Journal of the History of Photography in 2022. She recently curated an exhibition at the National Museum of Ireland dealing with Ireland’s revolutionary period entitled ‘Imaging Conflict.’