1972

Barry Halloran grows up with the revolutionary inheritance of his parents and grandparents but finds the island still divided. At eighteen he joins the Irish Republican Army believing armed struggle can complete an unfinished revolution, only to encounter the secrecy, discipline and moral compromises demanded by a conflict very different from the heroic history he has inherited.

Turning to photography, Barry begins recording Northern Ireland’s marches, soldiers, neighbourhoods and escalating violence rather than merely participating in it. His path leads to Derry on Bloody Sunday in 1972, where the killing of civil-rights demonstrators forces him to confront the distance between political ideals and the irreversible consequences of violence.