Between 2002 and 2003 Donovan Wylie spent almost a hundred days photographing inside the Maze prison. Through its history of protests, hunger strikes and escapes, this prison, holding both republican and loyalist prisoners, became synonymous with the Northern Ireland conflict. After the Belfast peace agreement in 1998, inmates were gradually released, but the Maze remained open.
Wylie was then the only photographer granted official and unlimited access to the site, when the demolition of the prison began, symbolizing the end of the conflict in 2007. He systematically recorded its demise. The photographs which document this period are divided into four sections, each depicting a “layer” of the prison: the internal walls, the various modes of fencing, the H-blocks and, finally, the perimeter walls, which reveal the external landscape. Eventually this once-enclosed space is reintegrated with the outside world.
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"British Watchtowers"
Observation, whether by the human eye, or the technical eye of a surveillance camera, requires an architectural structure that elevates the viewer into a position of command. The system of Iron Age hill forts, built across Britain from around 500 BC, used natural promontories to survey the surrounding landscape. Two thousand years later, the British army used a similar system of watchtowers to survey the territories of Northern Ireland, and to observe the actions of the local people under their occupation.
The lines of sight from the watchtowers generated a kind of virtual environment enveloping the border region of Northern Ireland. These high tech towers, constructed in the mid 1980’s, primarily in the mountainous border region of South Armagh, were landmarks in a thirty year conflict in and over Northern Ireland, euphemistically called “The Troubles”. The Towers were finally demolished between 2000 and 2007 as part of the British government’s “Demilitarization” program for Northern Ireland.
For over a year Donovan Wylie photographed these towers. Working entirely from an elevated position, enabled by military helicopter, he created a systematic survey of the towers, their positions and perspectives within the landscape.
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Buenísimas fotografías !!!
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