When Akihiko Okamura saw Ireland for the first time, in 1968, he likened the country to “a large cold black lump of soil.” Okamura, who had made a name for himself as a war photographer in Vietnam, soon found Ireland to be a haven. He relocated his family to Dublin and spent the next 16 years shooting everyday life on the Emerald Isle. Those photographs inevitably took in the Troubles, the violent ethno-nationalist conflict that destabilized Northern Ireland from 1968 to 1998. Okamura captures the surreal nature of the conflict: well-dressed women in kitten heels walking past burnt-out buildings; British soldiers in riot gear standing on the well-manicured lawn of a Derry estate; two little girls with purses approaching a makeshift shrine for a killed civilian. Stark, unsettling, poetic. —Paulina Prosnitz
The Arts Intel Report
Akihiko Okamura: The Memories of Others
![](https://photos.airmail.news/t6iia10h79k4nnr0box5h32ptjbq-38998335a12567250bc0e1401ef55504.jpg)
Akihiko Okamura, Street Street Memorial on Lecky Road, Derry, 1971.
When
Apr 11 – July 6, 2024
Where
Etc
Art
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Photo Musuem Ireland
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Dublin
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Closing Soon
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Europe
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History
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Museum exhibition
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Photography
Photo: © Estate of Akihiko Okamura
Nearby
1
Art
Irish Museum of Modern Art
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