‘They don’t see the necessity for division anymore’: how youngsters of Belfast are escaping town’s previous – in footage | Photography

When riots broke out in Belfast in 2021 between primarily younger loyalists and republicans, Irish photographer Hazel Gaskin requested herself: why does the world solely see Belfast’s younger folks by way of tales of rigidity, division and violence? So, within the wake of the riots, she spent 4 years visiting town, documenting youth golf equipment, boxing gyms, dance teams and youngsters hanging out on the road. “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 images in her new e book Breathing Land (the title lifted from a line in Seamus Heaney’s poem Tate’s Avenue) had been taken throughout Belfast, together with Alliance Avenue in north Belfast, and between the nationalist Falls Road and unionist Shankill Road in west Belfast. She primarily targeted on much less prosperous areas, the place peace partitions and peace gates nonetheless 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 provides. “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 residence to Belfast in her 20s to go to drum’n’bass golf equipment. She recollects having to watch out within the Protestant space of east Belfast the place her buddy 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 common tune Parful celebrates, Gaskin discovered that any divisions tended to evaporate in golf equipment. “Nobody cared where you were from,” she says. “You’re all there enjoying music together.”

Gaskin moved to London in 2009, finishing a MSc in Sociology with a deal with Photography and Urban Cultures at Goldsmiths in 2024. Alongside photographic initiatives, she’s a lecturer in pictures at London College of Fashion (LCF). Working on Breathing Land left her with a way of lingering tensions between communities in Belfast, with a mixture of anxiousness and pleasure concerning the prospect of a referendum over a reunited Ireland. She additionally noticed a quickly remodeling metropolis, together with demographic modifications as Belfast turns into extra ethnically numerous, with a lately reported rise in racism and anti-immigrant violence.

Mostly, although, she skilled a youthful era who wish to dwell with out the issues of the previous. “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 shall be revealed in February by New Dimension (£30).

Bright younger issues: 5 photographs from Breathing Land

Féile, 2023 (most important image, above)
This was taken on the rave night time at Féile an Phobail (Festival for the People). They placed on a dance night time to draw younger folks away from bonfires the nationalist group have across the anniversary of internment [a controversial policy of detention without trial during the Troubles].

Arran, 2024
I first met Arran a few years earlier than this photograph was taken. He was in a marching band known as Pride of Ardoyne, then he received into boxing. Here, he’s turning into extra of a person. He trains as a lot as he can at Cairn Lodge boxing membership, perhaps 5 nights per week. It’s such an enormous a part of his life.

Antonia, 2022
This was taken at a youth membership known as St Peters Immaculata. They do numerous outreach. Sometimes simply to interrupt up the night and get folks out, they’d take the children out in a bus and go for some meals or to a park or the seaside.

Demika, 2025
Demika is a freestyle dancer with a dance group known as Utopia. I hadn’t heard of freestyle dancing – my thoughts was blown. What they do is so bodily robust and highly effective.

Jesus Have Mercy On Me, 2021
The presence of faith remains to be very robust in Northern Ireland, with spiritual indicators and iconography throughout the panorama. Coming from the south of Ireland or travelling over from England, I discovered {that a} bit jarring. It’s a lot extra obvious as a part of day by day life in Belfast.

Untitled, 2022
This is likely one of the 11 July bonfires, lit at midnight, going into 12 July, which have a good time William of Orange’s defeat of King James in 1690. It’s a Protestant celebration. They will be seen as fairly intimidating. I used to be fairly nervous however it was actually numerous younger folks listening to rave music.