Click on the image to enlarge it.

Graffiti, Ballysillan Estate, Belfast:  Paul Graham:  Photograph:  1986
Purchased with the assistance from the MGC/V&A Purchase Grant Fund
 
‘It’s quite miserable and grey with the obvious ‘beware’, it’s doesn’t look like a very welcoming place’

‘It could be anywhere with the graffiti on the walls’

‘If you look really closely at the houses, you can see Union Jacks flying above them. The paint is orange so they are showing where their sympathies lie with the colour of the paint’

‘This image looks impartial, but can any image really be impartial?’

Paul Graham’s The Troubled Land series consists of 12 large format photographs, show and deal with the political and sectarian divisions of the Ulster landscape through the presence of flags, posters, colours, and graffiti, which define specific territories, town and countryside.

The image was chosen as at first glance it could be anywhere and might not be immediately identifiable as being in Northern Ireland or showing sympathies to either the Loyalists or Republicans. However, after discussion with Irish students at the University of Wolverhampton, some quickly remarked on the colour of the ‘beware’ graffiti. This instantly shows the loyalties of the people living in the area.

‘What has preoccupied my work…has been the way that history bears down upon society. It started with the work I did in Ireland – Troubled Land – which are apparently innocuous landscape photographs. In fact, each photograph was booby trapped – if you will excuse the term – with a small device that launched it into a political area, and made the landscape act as a reflection on that society.’
Statement from Paul Graham

Colour and symbols are important and play a great significance in Northern Ireland as they represent both solidarity and discord. Looking at the Paul Graham image the colour of the lettering of ‘beware’ is in orange. This colour is used as a symbol and reflects the sympathies of unionism and loyalism. Often colours can be painted on curbstones, lampposts or in other forms of graffiti to express the loyalties of the area. 

Red, white and blue is associated with unionism and loyalism in Northern Ireland. These colours are in the Union Jack.
 
Green as well as green, white and orange are associated with nationalism and republicanism. Green is the traditional colour of Ireland and green, white and orange of the colours of the Irish National Flag, the Tricolour. 

The Tricolour is three bands of vertical colour green, white and orange. It was designed to signify peace – symbolised by the white element of the flag - between Nationalists – green - and Unionists – orange. It was originally raised above the General Post Office in Dublin in 1916 during the Easter Rising. From then onwards it has been used by the Republicans and Nationalists in both Northern Ireland and the South.

The British Union Jack was made after the 1801 Act of Union between Britain and Ireland. It is made up of the St. George’s Cross the English national flag; the St. Andrew’s Cross, the Scottish national flag and the St. Patrick’s Cross - this flag is seen as a British symbol and is not widely flown by the Irish who do not accept it as their own.
 
The St Patrick’s Cross flag was first designed by the British authorities in Dublin Castle in the 17th Century as an equivalent to the St. George’s Cross.