The short backstory is that my first visit to Belfast came about as an extension of work that I’d begun in response to the chaos of the Thatcher years. I couldn’t quite believe the pain that was being inflicted on working class communities and started to document the social fallout, first picking up a camera in 1984. The city, in some ways, felt immediately familiar — I’d grown up on a Tyneside council estate that had a lot of issues in common with those in Belfast. In other ways, it felt absolutely alien — the constant security presence and sense of threat.

The edit begins in Belfast, moves to rural Tyrone, then Strabane Barracks, the summer months and ends with a number of images made in the aftermath of some of the worst crimes (the Shankill bombing, Greysteel, Loughinisland, Ballymoney and Omagh) of the era.

Andrew Moore Gallery