the Derry Suite

Eight photographic sculptures based on two photographs.

These two photographs were taken in the town of Derry (Londonderry) Northern Ireland in 1988.

The photographs show one of the four gates built in 1618 that lead in and out of the walled center city.

The gate in the photographs is Castle Gate, the gate nearest the Bogside District, where the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association marchers were denied entrance to the center city in 1968 because the Protestant minority that dominated city government had declared it off limits to the Catholic majority. This confrontation and the Battle of the Bogside in 1969 are seen by most as the start of “The Troubles”. These events led directly to the tragedy of Bloody Sunday on January 30, 1972.

In the two photographs, The Gate and The Wall, that form the center of each pair of photographic sculptures, we see Castle Gate as it was in 1988. Access to the wall above the gate is barricaded so that militants on both sides of “The Troubles” can not use it as a vantage point from which to rain terror on each other and anyone caught between them.

It is from this wall around the ancient city center with its four gates that Protestant hecklers have traditionally taunted the Catholic residents of the Bogside area.

In pair #1, you see these two central photographs surrounded by “snapshots” of various sites in Ireland that show doors, windows, openings in and between buildings closed and barricaded. In Gate 1, the “snapshots" are of contemporary sites, a result of the current conflict. In Wall 1, the “snapshots” are of much older sites, some dating as far back as the Iron Age, evidence of the history of humankind’s need to protect and close out.

In pair #2, you see the photographs disassembled and suspended on glass in front of the whole photograph in a manner that calls up images of the cross and of being targeted. The image of being targeted is reinforced by the red cross hairs on the front most panel of glass.

In pair #3, you see the photographs mounted on corrugated steel panels, the material that is so much in evidence as the material of choice used to form the barricades that are the subject of the photographs themselves. The same material that is used throughout the world as a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to protect, close, and separate.

In pair #4, you see the photographs by themselves as they might be exhibited in a gallery or museum, removed from any context other than the referents within.

When exhibited, the pairs in The Derry Suite are shown across from each other, the walls on one side and the gates on the other progressing from pair #1 to pair #4.