Project 4 – Sectarian Murders – Amianne Riggott OCA Blog

Look online at Paul Seawright’s work, Sectarian Murders.

– How does this work challenge the boundaries between documentary and art? Listen to Paul Seawright talk about his work at: http://vimeo.com/76940827

– What is the core of his argument? Do you agree with him?

– If we define a piece of documentary photography as art, does this change its meaning?

Paul Seawright created a powerful series called ‘Sectarian Murders’. Seawright revisited the sites of Sectarian attacks which took place in the 1970’s. These happened close to where he grew up in Belfast. Accompanying each photograph is text from newspaper reports at the time of the attacks.

Documentary photography is a style of photography that is straight forward and obvious when looked at. Usually the photograph will consist of people, places, objects and events. Seawright’s images are not obvious to me. Had I not have known the story beforehand, I wouldn’t have know they related to the Sectarian Murders. Seawright did not simply shoot the locations in a documentary styled image. He takes the images from a human view point. Seawright wanted the viewer to be that human to get a feel of possibly what the person at the time was feeling.

I believe his images move away from documentary photography as the images don’t relay anything from the actual event, only the scene of the crime, or locations of where the bodies were dumped. His images are not explicit in its context or story, persuading the viewer to piece it together.

Paul Seawright talks about his work as having a fine balance. He believes if images are too explicit it becomes journalistic and too concealed they become meaningless. Seawright likes that the construction meaning behind the images are done by the person viewing the image and not himself. He believes it is important to leave space for this to happen, photographers need this to happen. Allowing your work to obviously speak for itself will not always engage people.