Invitation to Observe

‘To see something in the form of an image is an invitation to observe, to learn, to attend to’. Reflecting on the ‘vast repository of images’ that make it hard for us to maintain ‘ignorance or amnesia’ in the face of war and human suffering, Susan Sontag warns that photographs can’t do the moral or intellectual work for us, ‘but they can start us on the way’.

Featuring artists, filmmakers and photographers from Northern Ireland, Argentina, Colombia and Iraq, Invitation to Observe presents extracts from eight important works that record, bear witness and reflect on the experience of conflict and conflict transformation.

The continous screening includes images from Frankie Quinn’s Interface Images, and Israel-Palestine, Helen Zout’s Disparations, Bitter from Open Shutters Iraq (Um Mohammed with Eugenie Dolberg), Edwin Cubillos Rodríguez’ Labrando Memorias (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica), Jamie Holman’s LCpl’s Stan Holman’s Belfast ’71 collection, Chad Alexander’s Entries and Belfast Exposed’s Portraits from a Fifties Archive. Drop by, see the work and browse the accompanying books and catalogues.

“Even if they are only tokens, and cannot possibly encompass most of the reality to which they refer, they still perform a vital function. The images say: keep these events in your memory.” Susan Sontag, ‘War and Photography’ in Nicholas Owen (ed.), Human Rights, Human Wrongs (2003).

Image from Entries by Chad Alexander