Source
Winter 1999

Issue 3 of Exposure, published in May 1992 carried an examination of the state of Irish photography by David Lee. His seven-point list of impediments to the growth of Irish photography included: the need for an honours degree course, a magazine or journal, a comprehensively stocked book shop, a book publisher, a national institution designated to collect ‘art photography’ and finally a better Gallery of Photography. We now have all of these (to varying degrees) bar a book publisher. If recent photographic history began in Ireland with the funding of the Gallery of Photography in 1978 and if Lee had Irish photography still in nappies in 1992 (aged 14) then as we face the millennium at the age of 21, we have matured fast.

The recently published report of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland recommends a strategy for police architecture: that police stations ‘should have, so far as possible, the appearance of ordinary buildings’. In this climate we are publishing Jonathan Olley‘s images of police and army barracks in Northern Ireland alongside a specially commissioned essay by Tom Paulin.

Chris Harrison‘s work Sites of Memory, War Memorials at the end of the 20th Century shows the histories behind the monuments to the dead of the two World Wars. David Brett dicusses the problems of memorializing contested history. We preview work by Magnum photographer Bruce Gilden who casts an American eye over Irish horse racing. The work will be shown in its entirety at The Gallery of Photography in February.

Source is a quarterly photography magazine, available in print and as a digital edition, published in Belfast, Northern Ireland. They publish emerging photographic work and engage with the latest in contemporary photography through news, thoughtful features and reviews of the latest exhibitions and books from Ireland and the UK. Their website brings together an archive of writing and pictures from the magazine alongside current features.¹