Flegs
Philip Arneill
Self-Published
English
Softcover
Edition 22/100
12 pages
143 x 207 mm
2023
There is something ethereal and beautiful about the shadows cast by moving flags, in contrast to the concrete messages they send, and the connotations they inevitably have in a Northern Irish context. Flags, or ‘Flegs’ in Belfast vernacular, while visible all year round, increase dramatically in number during the summer months, ostensibly as a celebration of the Protestant Orange marching season. They are of course more commonly a marker which declares the political and cultural loyalties of the neighbourhoods which erect them. Photographing them as shadows forces the eye to see them as something else, by neutralising their symbolic and sectarian power. Their message becomes illusory – as illusory as the sunshine required to make these images in a land famed for its grey and rainy skies – as they become indistinguishable from flags raised on any pole anywhere in the world. This limited edition risograph zine features images from the Flegs body of work, exhibited in September 2023 in the Now & Then: Pt. 3 show at Belfast Exposed Gallery.
(Source: https://www.philiparneill.com/flegs)
About the Artist
Author of the best-selling Tokyo Jazz Joints photobook, and co-creator and photographer of the ‘Tokyo Jazz Joints’ audiovisual project, my work explores the illusory ideas of home and culture by exploring insider-outsider dynamics and autoethnographic issues of place and identity. A Belfast-born photographer and AHRC-Northern Bridge PhD Researcher at Ulster University, I have studied and worked in Scotland, Egypt and Japan, and hold an M.A. Photojournalism & Documentary Photography from the University of Arts London. My work has been published widely online and in print media, and I have exhibited in both group and solo shows worldwide. I was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society (FRPS) in 2024.
https://www.philiparneill.com/
(Source: https://www.philiparneill.com/me)
