No Country for Young Men
Martin Seeds

This newspaper includes found portraiture of young boys from a Belfast school photo album shot in the 1960s in the North of Ireland. Accompanied is writing by four authors Dr Edwin Coomasaru, Orla Fitzpatrick, Sean O’Hagan, and Fearghus Roulston who reflect upon the work from very different viewpoints – a personal account of Northern Irish school days in the 1960s; the use of child imagery during the Troubles; childhood, time, and gender. This photobook coincided with his 2021 exhibition of the same name at Seen Fifteen Gallery, London.

‘These found portraits, enlarged and indistinct, possess an added resonance. They are appropriated from a Belfast school yearbook from 1965, a year of violent tremors in Northern Ireland that, with hindsight, seem darkly prescient. History hangs over these young boys like a falling shadow. As they stare, unknowing, into the camera lens, trouble awaits them as surely as night follows day.’