With the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Belfast City Council, we’ve been documenting the Sandy Row community with the legendary local photographer, Bill Kirk.
This idea started in early 2016 following the success of Kirk’s BAP exhibition and book of photographs from 1974. The idea was one of a number of projects identified after his entire collection of negatives were scanned and preserved by BAP over the previous year.
“Sandy Row Revisited” came about after the realisation that what was missing from the images were the stories behind them. We were spurred on by the untimely death of Jackie Robinson, a fountain of knowledge about the area and set about the task of gathering oral histories.
Kirk spent last eighteen months between 2017 an 2018 embedded in Sandy Row gathering thousands of photographs and over twenty video and audio interviews from residents, ex-pats, businesses, community leaders, politicians, teachers, and others who have a personal interest in the area. Along with Kirk’s images, the BAP has gathered dozens of oral histories.
Nearly 45 years after his groundbreaking work on Sandy Row, including his well-known Klondyke Bar series, Kirk returned to the area to find contemporary images of a community on the cusp of another major “re-development” phase. Indeed, the initial impulse for documenting Sandy Row during the early 70s was to bear witness to the decimation of one of Belfast’s oldest working-class communities. This new photographic work is testament to his respect for the people. Our hope is that this work reveals how a still thriving community continues to cope with the economic displacements that come with being located near the developing city centre. As the expansion of the city slowly encroaches into the area, there is the reality that gentrification may forever change the face of Sandy Row.
Kirk’s work has always been known for empathically capturing individuals and their everyday ways of life. His curiosity for the details is most shown in the images of home interiors where lives are lived and intimate memories are made. Frankie Quinn says of Bill’s work on Sandy Row:
“Bill exudes an affinity with the people. He has an understanding of their plight, a deep fondness of their character, a respect for the culture and a passion to record it. It is visual anthropology at its best. A socially aware photographer whose politics adorn every shot, like Robert Frank when asked by his mother why he took photos of the poor, he replied, ‘I don’t take photos of poor people, I take photos of people who struggle’ . The people of ‘The Row’ still struggle with the lot of the urban poor which comes across eloquently in Bill’s empathetic portrayal”
We have made many friends while working on this project. We’ve been helped along the way by various community groups, most notably Glenda Davies and the staff at the community centre, the Rev. Bobbie Moore, Dorothy Coates and Eddie Murray from St Aiden’s Church, the Rangers Club, The Royal Bar, local MLA Christopher Stalford, the Orange Hall, the crew at the allotments, staff at the Harry Fletcher home, Ted Booth, and all the other residents who gave interviews and posed for photographs. We are eternally grateful for their kindness, and look forward to our continued work on Sandy Row.
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