EDITORIAL:
Issue 7 — Spring 1996
Issue 7 — Spring 1996
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Involving people more directly in making their own images and encouraging them to engage directly with photography form a link for this issue. Belfast Exposed workshops with St. Malachy's and St. John Vianney Youth Clubs provided access for their members to cameras and darkrooms. This enabled them to build up a contemporary archive of their own images of the Markets and Lower Ormeau. This was carried out in conjunction with the compilation and research of 'historical images' gathered in the area. We are pleased to publish some of their explorations in the 'Portfolio Pages'.
Shifting the camera into the hands of the school aged and inviting them to construct their own images is also evidenced in the exhibition 'Once in a Life'. This opened at The Ark, the new childrens' cultural centre in Dublin and is reviewed for us by Fintan O'Toole. Empowerment through photography is central to the workshops being run by the artist Duncan Wallace at the Royal Victoria Hospital. The relationship between his images and the written responses of his collaborators 'involve reference to emotional reflections of past events and acknowledgement of day to day stimuli'. The work created also points to one possible strategy for seeing more clearly with words.
In the work of Roland Schneider, as reviewed by Padraig Murphy, we are given a unique insight into a process of 'self-documentation'. Schneider's book Entre Temps involves a 'coming to terms' with his mental illness. The work is a search for personal meaning through the use of the camera that should challenge anyone looking at or making photographs.
— John Duncan