Photo by Ed Kashi/VII – Brian Crothers and his girlfriend Sharon celebrate the 11th Night Bonfire under the ever-present symbol of the paramilitary in Belfast. The 11th Night celebration is part of the commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne, an important event to loyalists.
Photographer Ed Kashi originally went to Northern Ireland in 1988 with Andrew Ross, a reporter with the San Francisco Examiner, and continued to document the “troubles”, as the conflict was politely known. Kashi spoke with Crave about his work, providing a nuanced and humanistic record of daily life in the North.
Photo by Ed Kashi/VII – Members of the Ulster Volunteer Forces stand ready to fire in Belfast.
CraveOnline: What was your interested in going to North Ireland? What was the story you wanted to explore?
Ed Kashi: As a journalist I realized that the Protestant community was rarely covered by the mainstream media and that is what engaged me to continue my work there and sustain it for three years, in order to create a documentary project focused on this oft neglected part of the story there. As is often the case, once I dug deeper I became enthralled with all things Northern Ireland, it’s integral historical connections to the United States, the similar issues working class Protestant kids were facing, just like their Catholic neighbors who they so hated.
Can you speak about the way in which the on-going war had shaped the character and climate of North Ireland in the 1980s?
During the 1980s Northern Ireland was defined by the conflict. Even though the violence had abated from the worst days of the late 1960s and 1970s, there were still bombings, constant intimidation shootings and what had formed were really multiple mafias on both sides that controlled rackets, maintained order in their communities, were at conflict with each other as well as the security forces and one must remember that the British Army was still on the streets patrolling, so they were constant targets of the IRA. The mood was dour, the communities hateful and mistrustful, the economy weak except for the British support to prop it up and the atmosphere tough and lacking hope.
Photo by Ed Kashi/VII – British soldiers clear debris from an IRA bomb blast site in West Belfast.
What did you observe in the way in which the people of North Ireland adapted to their peculiar circumstances, in identifying with the religion and political structure of an outside (British) regime?
The Catholic community had an intelligent and politically sophisticated rhetoric for portraying the situation. Their struggle was aligned to the Palestinians and other minority groups that were being persecuted and held down by their neighbors at that time, and their political beliefs were well articulated by Gerry Adams and the Sinn Fein party. In some ways they were connected to the S. African situation for blacks, the civil rights movement in the US and other romanticized and poetic movements for justice and human rights. Adding the specter of violence and intimidation by the IRA, and it was an intoxicating and toxic effect. The British were at war with a people in their own country, akin to the US army occupying Connecticut! For an American it was a surreal situation to observe, especially because everyone looked the same and basically shared the same history and culture when you stepped back.
For the Protestant community it was about holding onto power and superiority, identifying as British more than the British, teaching hate and anger to their kids and developing a poor discourse towards reconciliation and a hopeful future. Their attitudes were quite close minded but also rightfully fearful. They also had a grand history that they felt a lineage towards. After all about a quarter of all US presidents hailed from Ulster Protestant heritage, and these were the folks who built the Titanic and waged war against the Nazis in WWII. There was tremendous pride in their history but it was inextricably tied to the British colonial experiment that had begun in large measure in the late 1600s when the English overlords pushed Protestants from Scotland to migrate to the northern part of the island of Ireland to become farmers and take over the lands.
Photo by Ed Kashi/VII – Children play around an impromptu bonfire in The Fountain, a Loyalist housing estate in Londonderry.
What do you see as a key take away from the time you spent photographing the people of North Ireland?
What my work always teaches me is that life is far more complex and most of life happens in the grey middle folds of life, not the black and white edges. But the media feels it always has to work on those dramatic fringes, so our understanding of complex stories is too often blinded by the dramatic flash of light that seems to be the only way the media knows how to work.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
