February 2002 Thirty years ago, on Sunday, January 30, 1972, the N.I.C.R.A (Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association) organized a peaceful march in Derry to protest the recently passed Internment Law, permitting imprisonment without charges being filed of anyone suspected to be a supporter of Irish independence. Twenty thousand marchers gathered on a sports field; they were dressed in their Sunday best. Many had come right out of church with their children. Within moments the British Police attacked the marchers with tear gas and purple dye and, according to many eyewitnesses, progressed to bullets without any provocation. Thirteen were killed (one more died in the hospital), and sixty were wounded. Some were grandparents, some no more than seventeen years old. But the Widgery Inquiry, set up to investigate the killings, acquitted the soldiers. Among both Irish and outside observers there is a consensus that the British whitewash marked the end of the non-violent civil rights movement in Ireland and the escalation of armed resistance. Preceding him, of course, there are many others: Eugene Smith, perhaps the most romantic of them all, whose pioneering environmental portrait of mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan, during which he insisted on eating the poisoned fish like everyone else also led to his own brutal beating. Or the hundreds of journalists who recently flocked to Afghanistan, where eight of them were killed, some executed. This exhibition proposes to examine the triple role of photography in shaping consciousness: as a witness and possible revealer of truths; as a community icon; and as a testimonial and tool for memory. But this is not your usual museum exhibit with artful frames and vintage prints. The "quality" of the image is not a concern. In many cases there are no negatives so digital prints, pinned to the walls, have been used and freely mix with newspapers enlargements, commemorative posters, banners and memorabilia. The sources of the images are, in part, professional: The march had been very well attended by the international press (Fulvio Grimaldi, Gilles Peress, Robert White and many others were there), and the relentless juxtaposition of the same scenes with small differences in timing and points of view reads like a movie. But many pictures were also authored by amateurs, including marchers and residents of the area. Several walls are dedicated to the coverage by European and American newspapers. The Derry Journal, for example, ran identity pictures of the thirteen dead ( "A Butcher's Dozen" in the famous words of poet Thomas Kinsella), which were later used in numerous posters and several murals. An important feature of the exhibition is the "Bloody Sunday Virtual Assistant," which represents a pioneering use of virtual reality in a courtroom, enabling witnesses, aided by maps and panoramas of Derry, to describe their movements and what they had seen. But in their modesty the memorabilia are perhaps the most heart-wrenching: the contents of a dead man's pocket, a letter from a child about his grandfather, a rosary, the boxing trophy of 17-year-old Jack Duddy, a watch with a broken band, a Mars candy bar. These objects make us feel these deaths in ways that perhaps no image of a pool of blood can. Photographs of Michael Kelly's bloody, gunshot undershirt, and of Patrick Doherty's scuffed boots have replaced the originals that were removed by the Saville inquiry. But history has taken a new turn: In 1998, under pressure from the International League for Human Rights, the British Parliament and Tony Blair finally agreed to reopen the case under Lord Saville. For thirty years the Bloody Sunday's victims have remained "living dead." Their families and much of the Irish community could never move past the 1972 trauma. In their hearts and minds, as in this exhibition's photographs, time is still frozen. -Carole Naggar The exhibition is on view at the International Center of Photography, New York, until March 17. An accompanying volume is available from Smart Art Press (310) 264-4678 or www.track16.com. <Rollover Images above>