Thomas Pool: What can you tell us about yourself? How did you become interested in photography and what drives your practice?
The Belfast Shooter: I’m known as The Belfast Shooter, a name that I’ve given myself because I feel that it’s exactly what I’m doing. I go around and shoot in the streets of Belfast. I’m relatively new to this. I started my photography Instagram page six months ago. Photography is a whole new world to me.
I did media studies at university, so I have some background in photography. But after graduation, I fell into that nine-to-five life for the past seven years or so and didn’t have much of a chance to focus on anything creative. I wanted to use my page as a wee way to show Belfast as it is in 2024, and to experiment with photography.
When it comes to my drive, the reason I started photographing the different sides of Belfast was because I come from a nationalist area in West Belfast. I couldn’t get a house there, so had to move to a loyalist area in East Belfast. It was a culture shock because I went from seeing Irish murals, Irish flags, and other signifiers of Irish culture to the absolute opposite, where there are Union Jacks and loyalist murals everywhere. I just thought to myself, I want to create a project out of this. I’m going to show people what it’s like in Belfast in 2024. So that’s really what drove me to get started with it all.
TP: What equipment do you use? What do your editing and selection processes look like?
TBS: For the first five months of this project, I’ve used my mobile phone. I used all the usual apps that you can download on the app store. The last two months, I have been using a simple camera, which is a Canon 550D. For editing my photographs, I use Adobe Lightroom.
In terms of selecting photos, I love to capture the political angle of what’s on the walls in Belfast. I also like to show that there’s life here as well, beyond the political, so I try and get more images of people in their everyday environments. I try to capture that, even though it may seem crazy in Belfast with everything on the walls – we just live on here, as if it’s completely normal. So, I try to select pictures based on what shows everyday life for people here.
TP: As AI technology grows more ubiquitous, including Apple’s new AI photo editor tool, how do you think photographers will convey authenticity and maintain trust with their audiences going forward? I’m thinking of a photograph you took that appeared to show a convicted ‘Shankill Butcher’ participating in an Orange Order parade – a scenario that, in a few years’ time, many could say is false and made by AI.
TBS: I hope that my style of photography can continue to be trusted. I’m capturing things happening in Belfast here and now. That particular photograph you’re referring to, people would know that it’s real. I captured in on the 12th of July on the Shankill Road. I can see how in a few years people could argue that it’s not real or that it’s AI, but I try to keep my practice true to the events as they happen in Belfast. I think AI has its benefits for photographers when editing their work. But I don’t have an issue with people thinking that I’ve made something up; I photograph Belfast as it is, and people who know Belfast understand that.
TP: The Irish nonfiction writer Mark O’Connell (author of Notes from an Apocalypse and A Thread of Violence) once wrote of the North: “I experience the North as a realm of deep cognitive dissonance… I’ll see the Union Jack flying from a lamppost, or pay for something using pounds rather than euros, and I’ll find myself wondering why everyone is just going around acting as if they were in Britain… If you didn’t know anything about the context, you could almost wind up thinking there was something vaguely whimsical going on, some gigantic and inscrutable performance-art piece that maybe had something to do with the fictionality of nationhood.” I wonder how you feel about this quote, and whether it reflects your approach to capturing everyday images of Belfast’s loyalist and republican communities, symbolism, and parades?
TBS: I think that quote is spot on; it’s brilliant. To be honest, Belfast is a very strange place. Like I said, I grew up in a fairly nationalist area, and it was such a culture shock, moving to a loyalist area, that I felt compelled to start this project. I was just so in shock seeing the ‘other side’, the loyalist murals and communities. I don’t mean that I disagree or disapprove of it all; it’s just so completely different to the community I grew up in.
But to go back to the quote, I think that’s often people’s perception of Belfast. When visitors and tourists come to Belfast, most people stay in the city centre or explore the Titanic Quarter in East Belfast and other tourist attractions. These attractions are mostly in loyalist neighbourhoods, so you’ll only see Union Jacks and British culture. But it’s a very small portion of the city. Where I grew up, you’d never see the Union Jack, you’d never be exposed to any sort of Britishness or think there was any on the island of Ireland.
I see Belfast as a big open air, walkable gallery. What I love most about this city is all the class art everywhere, not just political stuff. Belfast is small, so you can literally walk down one street which is full of UVF or UDA murals and Union Jacks, then turn the corner and you’ll see Tiocfaidh Ár Lá graffiti, Irish flags, and everything else Irish. That’s what Belfast is. And whether you agree or you disagree, it doesn’t matter because this is Belfast – a cultural hotspot with plenty of history, and it’s just a good wee fun place.
TP: Your work exemplifies the photographer’s role as both artist and documentarian. What does this duality look like, for you and your practice?
TBS: I’m not the best of writers, and since I started my page to document Belfast, I thought photography was the best way to do that. It’s very important to me to represent the city accurately. I’ve seen Belfast misrepresented in art and media for years. People travel from across the world to tell our story for us, so I think it’s really important for someone from Belfast to capture it as it really is. I also give information about the areas with my posts, so people aren’t just getting information from Wikipedia. It’s how I capture these images that elevate them above just pure documentary.
TP: Are there any upcoming projects you’re working on? What’s next for you?
TBS: This past year has been mostly me learning and making connections, as well as mistakes, and learning from those mistakes. I’ve been really blessed to pick up a substantial following on social media, which has really opened a lot of doors for me. At the minute, I’m currently working on some photobooks as well as working with artists in Belfast’s hip-hop scene, which is really cool. So, I’m focusing a lot on the hip-hop scene here, as well as continuing to document Belfast and put my social media images into photobooks. I’ve been speaking with a couple of studio spaces to create an exhibition of my work next year, but in the meantime, I’m learning, making mistakes, and just seeing where this takes me.
The Belfast Shooter is a photographer whose work captures the everyday life in Belfast’s communities.
