The invisible world

Paul Seawright's photographs are understated and restrained, but just as powerful as the more explicit imagery of the Developing World we are used to, says Billy Leahy

Precisely one year ago, the Gallery of Photography hosted a selection of 70 works by prominent photojournalist Tom Stoddard. Entitled iWITNESS, the exhibition depicted images of the most horrifying humanitarian disasters in recent times. Images of the AIDS crisis devastating sub-Saharan Africa hung alongside photographs of 9/11, the siege of Sarajevo and the Rwandan refugee crisis of 1994, while portrayals of Serbian ethnic cleansing appeared beside the February 2000 floods in Mozambique.

The images were shocking and so explicit that they left no room for a nonchalant response or blasé reaction – even to eyes firmly glazed and hardened by the sheer amount of tragedy piped into homes in our media-saturated society. Their success, in short, lay in the very nature that they were inescapably direct.

Fast-forward 12 months, and we are presented with perhaps the perfect foil to Stoddard's iconographic images of human suffering. The current exhibition by Belfast-born photographer Paul Seawright in the Kerlin gallery, invisible cities, takes the Developing World cities of Lagos, Johannesburg, Lusaka and Addis Ababa as its subject matter, with completely different results to Stoddard.

invisible cities is an immensely understated body of work that manages to challenge and engage the viewer on an entirely more intellectual level and at a much more restrained intensity. Seawright approaches his subject with a definite "peripheral vision", which is in absolute contrast to Stoddard's directness; this, it is apparent, is the difference between the work of an artist and that of a photojournalist.

Africa is home to the world's fastest growing cities with Lagos, for instance, expected to become the world's second-largest city by 2015. The last census in Nigeria's economic centre put the population at six million people and with an estimated 300,000 arriving annually, that figure has now probably surpassed the 10 million mark. With such a massive influx, Lagos has become a city without structural logic, where expansive shantytowns and semi-permanent urban sprawls dominate 3,500 square kilometres of lagoon, islands, swamp and mainland.

Forgotten and overlooked corners of the city boast massive populations, while the affluent overlook the spreading chaos from two well-appointed, fortress-style islands. For Seawright, such a city is a prime subject matter. From the time when he first gained recognition for his investigation of the troubled political landscape of his native Northern Ireland, with his Orange Order and Police Force series during the 1990s, Seawright has consistently placed his work on the periphery of cities and human settlements. The "generic malevolent landscapes" that have become a near obsession in his work are in plentiful supply in urban Africa.

Seawright refuses to place the photographs geographically so, in theory at least, each image could be of any one of the four cities he visited. This lack of context and presentation of an undefined territory plays on the notion of anywhere/everywhere, and is more than a little unsettling. The oft-noted lack of narrative in Seawright's work is also present in his current exhibition, but this time it does not seem as overwhelming as in previous shows, with some narrative sneaking in to the images from time to time.

Like in hidden (Seawright's commissioned series of photographs of post-war Afghanistan), invisible cities takes a low key and unassuming look at modern Africa and the social problems it faces. It is again a familiar theme that the artist approaches, but once more he manages to eschew the clichéd portrayal of a continent constantly experiencing seismic change. The silent and almost entirely depopulated photographs echo the artist's previous work, with the viewer left to ponder his own conclusions, rather than have feelings of pity dictated to him by images designed to invoke emotional responses that, although necessary, are all too common.

?More invisible cities runs at the Kerlin gallery, Anne's Lane, South Anne Street, Dublin 2 until 17 December. 01 670 9093, www.kerlin.ie. Pictured above: 'Dolphin Estate'; below: 'History'