Seamus Murphy tells Stephanie McBride that, when photographing Ireland, he was looking for what often goes unnoticed and unrecorded, what moves and surprises him
Seamus Murphy’s ‘The Republic’ began as a personal mission to visualise Ireland and its shifting cultural contours around the centenary of the 1916 Rising. Since then, the project has grown through various iterations and exhibitions.
Murphy grew up in Ireland and lives in London. His work as a war photographer has taken him to conflict zones around the world. On a trip to Syria, among rebel groups in 2012, he asked himself, ‘If I was willing to risk so much to tell a story about other people’s countries, wasn’t it time I did something on my own tribe?’ After decades away, his unique perspective on modern Ireland captures both the strange and the familiar, with a highly poetic visual sense.
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