Belfast city centre

In The Land Of The Cyclops

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When you come home from work one afternoon to find that your back window has been blinded by a giant poster of three fashionable ladies, each with one eye covered, images from i-D magazine which turns its name sideways to form a winking face, the only appropriate recourse would be to take a large knife and cut yourself a peeper. The pigeons by KVLR and Apache Tribe have yet to peck their way free of the flower-headed man to uncover the window on the Gresham Street side.

The images were part of the 2019 Belfast Photo Festival. Covered over is NOTA’s 2013 Belfast Butcher

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Copyright © 2020 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Every Cloud

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“Summer” continues today with showers and a high temperature of 18. Danni Simpson (web | ig) helps us keep perspective on the Norn Iron weather: “no rain, no flowers”. She has also painted the scaffold at the North Street end of Garfield Street – see the final image, preceded by a 2019 shot from when the scaffolding was raised.

X06800 2019-09-08 Garfield Scaffold+

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Copyright © 2019/2020 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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The Gateway Is Love

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William Swanston, with partner Thomas Bones, commissioned a new building for their linen collar and cuff concern, to be raised in 1890 at the corner of Queen and College streets. Arthur Chichester, flanked by the coats of arms of Belfast and Ulster, looks down over the now-unused doorway. (For more, see the excellent page at History Hub Ulster.) Swanston House is known to many in Belfast as the home of the Athletic Stores and the Educational Company; the facade was retained for its current incarnation ‘The Roost’, a student dormitory.

“‘Soul is deep, essence is beauty, the journey is freedom & the gateway is love’ – Beatrix.” 

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Copyright © 2020 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Human Life International

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HLI (web | tw) works to bring about “An Ireland where God is first”. Its “holy face” campaign asks people to partake in a form of devotion dating back to 1885 that involves reflecting on the face of Jesus in order to affirm the first three commandments (HLI). One of the images used is from the Shroud Of Turin, which radiocarbon dating has dated to the 13th-14th century (which is when it first appeared, in France), hence the graffiti “Get a life, not an afterlife”, “[Seek my face] … find a forgery” (in North Street). On another hoarding, in University Street, “the H_ngm_n” has lost a game of hangman with “Bella”. The final image, with SPUC’s “Repeal Section 9” is also from University Street. For a history of the shroud, see this CNN article.

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Copyright © 2020 Sabine Troendle (web | Fb)
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