In 1972, at the age of 26, Gilles Peress photographed the massacre of Irish civilians by the British army on Bloody Sunday. In the 1980s, he returned to Northern Ireland with the intention of testing the limits of visual language and perception to understand this intractable conflict. Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, a work of “documentary fiction,” organizes a decade of photographs across 22 fictional “days” to articulate the spiraling structure of history during a conflict that seemed never-ending, where each day became a repetition of all the other days, just like that day: days of violence, marching, riots, unemployment, mourning, and also “craic,” when people try to forget their plight.
This ambitious publication pushes the language of documentary photography to the extreme, then challenges readers to stop and solve the puzzle of meaning themselves.
Each copy comes with *Annals of the North*, a text-and-image almanac on the theme *Whatever You Say, Say Nothing*, also published separately by Steidl.
(Two hardcover books and one paperback book, all wrapped in cardboard boxes and placed in a tote bag.)
Published by Steidl, 2021
37.5 x 25.5 cm
1,960 pages
ISBN: 978-3-95829-544-5
In 1972, at the age of 26, Gilles Peress photographed the massacre of Irish civilians by the British army on Bloody Sunday. In the 1980s, he returned to Northern Ireland with the intention of testing the limits of visual language and perception to understand this intractable conflict. Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, a work of “documentary fiction,” organizes a decade of photographs across 22 fictional “days” to articulate the spiraling structure of history during a conflict that seemed never-ending, where each day became a repetition of all the other days, just like that day: days of violence, marching, riots, unemployment, mourning, and also “craic,” when people try to forget their plight.
This ambitious publication pushes the language of documentary photography to the extreme, then challenges readers to stop and solve the puzzle of meaning themselves.
Each copy comes with *Annals of the North*, a text-and-image almanac on the theme *Whatever You Say, Say Nothing*, also published separately by Steidl.
(Two hardcover books and one paperback book, all wrapped in cardboard boxes and placed in a tote bag.)
Published by Steidl, 2021
37.5 x 25.5 cm
1,960 pages
ISBN: 978-3-95829-544-5
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