Set of photographs #16

Participant commentary

1. ‘I extracted this image from Facebook; it is the Lisburn [small city outside Belfast] Noticeboard. I like this. There is a sharing of local information. I feel like I belong. But I am ambivalent. That is not a bad thing. People put up old pictures on the Facebook noticeboard. They are an insight into the local history. There is a common memory. I am getting it into me, but at the same time, only slowly acquiring and at the same time, these pictures remind me that this common memory is not mine.’

2 and 3. These pictures are of a local cemetery. It is very different from Poland. I feel an outsider, that, in visiting this place, I am committing a kind of sacrilege. There are Polish RAF graves here, but they are in Milltown Cemetery in Belfast. We celebrate Independence Day there each year. I feel a disconnection from my ancestors. On the majority of the graves, both the date of birth and death do not seem to be there.

4. This is a picture of students walking in the pouring rain. I notice that young people do not wear coats when it is raining.’

Participant 6: ‘A lot of people don’t wear appropriate clothing.’

Tess [facilitator]: ‘’I suppose we are used to it, inured. And it is not hard rain, like the rivers of rain that would sweep you off your feet in France or Italy.

Participant A: ‘Yes, it is not ‘wet’ rain.’

5. This is a picture of a rooftop. I was thinking here about how the windows are made here so that you cannot clean them and have to get a windowcleaner to reach. The windows are different in Poland.

6, 7 and 8. In Poland we have net curtain, so I put them up here.

Tess [facilitator] we used to have them here, net or lace curtains’

9. This is picture of shelves with polish food. I like it that there are Polish shops here now; a nice reminder of home. In 1999 when I came here first there were no shops like that. How Northern Ireland has changed.

10. This is the noticeboard again

11. This is a picture of a monitoring form. In Northern Ireland, to apply for a job, you need to tell employers your religion and ethnicity. My head turns when I try to figure out my identity, may be somewhere in between. [note: the information is collected to comply with Fair Employment legislation. TM].

12., 13, 14, 15, 16 These are pictures of the ‘Marching Season’.[ Groups of people from the Unionist/Loyalist/Protestant communities join marching bands which march on 12 July each year to celebrate the victory of the protestant King William of Orange (Netherlands) over the Catholic (English) King James. TM] People have different attitudes. There is an ambivalence towards it in my own family. We are observers, watchers.

18. This is a picture of raspberries growing. This gives me a connection back to Poland.

19 and 20 This is a railway track which comes out at the Giant’s Causeway. I travelled a lot by train when I was younger. So maybe the tracks hold a nostalgia for me. And, we are all journeying in life.

21.This is a picture of two murals on the Newtownards Road in Belfast, the one in the background was painted a long time ago and depicts 1973, during the Troubles. The new mural shows a very different picture of a young woman who is maybe not from Northern Ireland. The older mural show a history I am not part of, but it is slowly becoming part of my history.’

Comments from other participants

Participant 14: ‘Yes, food is a great connector, even if people have no common language.

Participant 26: ‘I understand that sense of being in between. We should take the best of different cultures. When we were younger, we were taken to Pakistan to find our roots – only for me to find out that my roots are in Ballymena. How beautiful it is to experience both, it’s like having two souls.’

Participant 14: ‘ When a person comes to another country as a child there is flexibility. When you are older, the mindset is already more fixed.’