Family Album: Photographs of a Belfast Community by Frankie Quinn documents what remained of the unique Belfast community of Ballymacarrett/Short Strand before its redevelopment in the 1980s. In 1982, a camera club was established at the local community centre, and for Frankie Quinn’s 16th birthday, his father gave him a camera with the simple message: ‘Go there, do something with the camera, and stay out of trouble’. The resulting exhibition explores daily life in Belfast: its streets, housing, faces, conflict, and the Fleadh festival, through the lenses of Frankie Quinn and Gilles Peress.

The Belfast Archive Project aims to preserve, interpret, and present Northern Ireland’s vanishing photographic heritage. The project has been entrusted with collections of negatives and photographic prints to protect them for future generations, and to make them accessible through exhibitions, digital resources, and print publications.

These archives include the work of some of Northern Ireland’s most respected photographers including Frankie Quinn, Bill Kirk, and James Bell.

About Frankie Quinn

Since the 1980s Frankie Quinn has documented conflict and its social context across Ireland, Palestine/Israel, Turkey/Kurdistan and Bosnia as well as his native Belfast. His work has been widely published, and exhibited and acquired for public collections in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, North America and Europe.

About Gilles Peress

Gilles Peress was born in France in 1946 and began working as a photographer in 1970. He joined Magnum Photos in 1971 and his work is represented in the collections of major cultural institutions across America and Europe. Peress came to Northern Ireland in 1971 to begin a 20-year project on the Troubles. The power and focus of his work created a landmark in the history of photography when his continuums of events during Bloody Sunday were used as forensic evidence in subsequent inquiries.