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When riots broke out in Belfast in 2021 between mainly young loyalists and republicans, Irish photographer Hazel Gaskin asked herself: why does the world only see Belfast’s young people through stories of tension, division and violence? So, in the wake of the riots, she spent four years visiting the city, documenting youth clubs, boxing gyms, dance groups and teenagers hanging out on the street. “I learned these kids are just being normal teenagers,” says Gaskin. “There are experiences that are different – they come from areas with a lot of historic violence. But people are going about their everyday life. It’s very normal.”
The photos in her new book Breathing Land (the title lifted from a line in Seamus Heaney’s poem Tate’s Avenue) were taken across Belfast, including Alliance Avenue in north Belfast, and between the nationalist Falls Road and unionist Shankill Road in west Belfast. She mainly focused on less affluent areas, where peace walls and peace gates still separate communities.
“I didn’t realise how many of these peace walls were still fixed structures in Belfast,” says Gaskin. “As an Irish person, to be so ignorant on that stuff shocked me, including how it physically affects people’s movement through the city. The physical structures play into the mental thing: ‘We’re separated.’ Schools are segregated. People don’t generally mix.
“There are tensions between Catholics and Protestants,” Gaskin adds. “But there are all kinds of tensions when you’re young. It’s not necessarily about people from one side and another side coming to fight. There are different things at play, like social mobility, poverty … all things that affect this generation. That’s the story.”
Born in Dublin in 1986, Gaskin used to make the 100-mile journey from home to Belfast in her 20s to go to drum’n’bass clubs. She recalls having to be careful in the Protestant area of east Belfast where her friend lived. “You couldn’t park the car outside the house, because it had a Dublin registration and would’ve probably been vandalised, and we didn’t speak going into her house, as they would’ve heard my accent, which would’ve maybe caused trouble for my friend from her neighbours. It’s not like that now.”
As the Belfast rap group Kneecap’s popular song Parful celebrates, Gaskin found that any divisions tended to evaporate in clubs. “Nobody cared where you were from,” she says. “You’re all there enjoying music together.”
Gaskin moved to London in 2009, completing a MSc in Sociology with a focus on Photography and Urban Cultures at Goldsmiths in 2024. Alongside photographic projects, she’s a lecturer in photography at London College of Fashion (LCF). Working on Breathing Land left her with a sense of lingering tensions between communities in Belfast, with a mix of anxiety and excitement about the prospect of a referendum over a reunited Ireland. She also saw a rapidly transforming city, including demographic changes as Belfast becomes more ethnically diverse, with a recently reported rise in racism and anti-immigrant violence.
Mostly, though, she experienced a younger generation who want to live without the problems of the past. “I definitely think the future’s going to be more connected,” says Gaskin. “Young people don’t like the peace walls. They want to live in a ‘normal’ situation. More schools are coming in that are less religiously segregated. Young people don’t see the need for the division any more.”
Breathing Land by Hazel Gaskin will be published in February by New Dimension (£30).
Bright young things: five images from Breathing Land
Féile, 2023 (main picture, above)
This was taken at the rave night at Féile an Phobail (Festival for the People). They put on a dance night to attract young people away from bonfires the nationalist community have around the anniversary of internment [a controversial policy of detention without trial during the Troubles].
Arran, 2024
I first met Arran a couple of years before this photo was taken. He was in a marching band called Pride of Ardoyne, then he got into boxing. Here, he’s becoming more of a man. He trains as much as he can at Cairn Lodge boxing club, maybe five nights a week. It’s such a big part of his life.
Antonia, 2022
This was taken at a youth club called St Peters Immaculata. They do a lot of outreach. Sometimes just to break up the evening and get people out, they’d take the kids out in a bus and go for some food or to a park or the seaside.
Demika, 2025
Demika is a freestyle dancer with a dance group called Utopia. I hadn’t heard of freestyle dancing – my mind was blown. What they do is so physically strong and powerful.
Jesus Have Mercy On Me, 2021
The presence of religion is still very strong in Northern Ireland, with religious signs and iconography within the landscape. Coming from the south of Ireland or travelling over from England, I found that a bit jarring. It’s so much more apparent as part of daily life in Belfast.
Untitled, 2022
This is one of the 11 July bonfires, lit at midnight, going into 12 July, which celebrate William of Orange’s defeat of King James in 1690. It’s a Protestant celebration. They can be seen as quite intimidating. I was quite nervous but it was really a lot of young people listening to rave music.
