Seen and unseen: Identity, place, and resolution in post-conflict Northern Ireland. How using the praxis of photography, book arts, and constructed textiles can give voice to memory and experience

This research project sets out to explore how the experience of living through a traumatic event can occur in a vacuum of non-recognition – the unseen. My research uses an autoethnographic methodology to explore my experience of growing up through the period known as the Troubles, or conflict, in Belfast, Northern Ireland (1968 – 1998). It draws on the tropes of photography, constructed textiles, and the practice of book arts, and how that practice potentially creates and informs representation and memory. As a working-class Protestant female, navigating both a fractured family environment as well as witnessing a society in conflict, I demonstrate how a well- documented event can have untold narratives. The representation and narrative of the period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland were from a very male and media focused perspective. The narrative of this thesis unfolds through a process of autoethnographic reflection, exploration of what memory can mean, alongside a developing creative practice as a contribution to knowledge in this research study. Exploring the interconnection between book arts, textiles, and photography, my practice explores how the witnessing of such events can lead to reparation and post-conflict recovery from trauma, allowing the unseen to be seen and acknowledged. The concept of witnessing or bearing witness to an experience in this context enables a therapeutic engagement, it is not as a witness to a scene but a witness to the impact of the experience. The term witnessing takes on a humanitarian meaning of acknowledgment and is much more than the act of seeing. Nancy Goodman (2012, p. 3) notes that ‘Witnessing is a powerful force that allows massively traumatic experiences to become known and communicated.’ With the development of my practice in this research, I layer memories, experience, and social observation to navigate these themes in the work. The material structures of photography, book arts, and related stitching of both paper and textiles, bring these elements together in a tangible form to give voice to this exploration.

Citation

Connolly, L. (2026). Seen and unseen: Identity, place, and resolution in post-conflict Northern Ireland. How using the praxis of photography, book arts, and constructed textiles can give voice to memory and experience [Unpublished doctoral thesis]. University of Chester.

URI

https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/handle/10034/629912

Type

Thesis or dissertation

Language

en