Photographs by © Roland Iselin - Introduction

Photographs by © Roland Iselin - Introduction

Roland Iselin is a photographer based in Switzerland. His on-line Archive of photographs is available at:
      https://www.rolandiselin.org/

Between February 2018 and October 2019, Roland undertook six trips to Northern Ireland to take photographs of urban and rural public spaces which contain political statements in the form of murals, memorials, graffiti, etc. Roland was following in the footsteps of photographer Paul Graham who published a series of photographs in his 1987 book 'Troubled Land: the Social Landscape of Northern Ireland.'

Roland was interested in what signs, produced by various interest groups, could still be found in public spaces within the landscape. And what these signs said about their view of the future of Northern Ireland, in contrast to the official statements of politicians. Roland named his collection - Revisited (Troubled Land) 2018-2019.

Roland explained the background to his interest in Northern Ireland, and the approach to taking the photographs:

Images of "the troubles" on the television news are early memories from my childhood. There were the usual images of destroyed cars, houses, tanks in the streets, as well as of dead and injured people. When I came across Paul Graham's book, "Troubled Land", while studying photography at the Zurich University of the Arts, I was impressed by his approach to take different images. The first thing I noticed is the wide, ever-changing sky, the green landscapes and the gray, squat settlements. The signs of the different parties to the conflict as well as the religious basis apeard in the picture sometimes in a very discreet way and other times right into your face.

I took this image design intention into my project "Revisited", which in its second part initially followed in the footsteps of Paul Graham. I first visited the places identified in the book and looked for traces that are still visible today, after the Good Friday Agreement. I created an artist's book with these first pictures. Fascinated by this small country and its history, I visited Northern Ireland six times in total. I expanded my travels further and tried to visit every corner if possible. My project went far beyond what I had originally planned. I see this signs as the unconscious, which has a more hidden effect and shapes neighborhoods, in contrast to the official politics.

Some of the photographs from these fieldtrips were subsequently presented at an exhibition at the Kunsthalle Memmingen in Germany.

In December 2023 Roland Iselin donated a digital copy of these photographs to the CAIN Archive. The photographs are available at:
      cain.ulster.ac.uk/roland_iselin
Users are free to download images for personal use and private study. Anyone wishing to use the images commercially should first contact Roland Iselin.