Anthony Haughey's series "Disputed Territory" is an ongoing project investigating the constant conflict over territory, rights and ownership of land in Europe. Haughey has been living and working near the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic for a number of years.

In the foregrounds of his pictures are signs and objects, whose status and significance are not always precise or conclusive, and which require a more complex form of reading that politicizes the landscape as territory. More recently, Haughey has extended his focus to the Balkans, examining Bosnia and Kosova for similar signs of conflict.

Haughey wants to underscore the human costs of war and the extremities that people are driven to in the most urgent of times. He eschews the spectacular and decisive moment, instead representing that time after the storm of war, murder and "ethnic cleansing." These images represent the aftershock, the trace of acts and deeds which are almost unrepresentable. While they are quiet images on the whole, they indicate a profound unease, demanding that we remember that recollection and forgetting are not innocent and neutral acts, but always contain a powerful political charge that refuses to dissipate.
- Martin Mc Cabe -

Nominated by Tanya Kiang, Director of the Gallery of Photography, Dublin.