Belfast Exposed

Exhibitions

3rd Aug - 16th Sep

Portrait of Humanity Vol. 5

In partnership with the British Journal of PhotographyBelfast Exposed is delighted to be hosting the British Journal of P...

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1st Jun - 22nd Jul

Else Time | Ulster University MFA Photography Exhibition 2023

In this unique time that we find ourselves in, the things that once were so certain, are no longer so.Else Time is an 'ot...

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Community

21st May - 22nd May

Showing the faces of dementia with Alzheimer’s NI

Ahead of the Alzheimer’s Society Annual Conference 2019 (ASAC19), Belfast Exposed was commissioned by Alzheimer’s NI to w...

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4th May - 20th May

Coronation Generation 2023

Bringing together young people from across communities for Coronation GenerationIn April 2023, Belfast Exposed worked wit...

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Crossings

Gallery 1

17th Feb 2006 to 31st Mar 2006

About The Exhibition

Belfast Exposed launched its new 2006 gallery programme with an exhibition by noted Magnum photographer Alex Webb. For the past 25 years Webb has been documenting the narrow strip of land between the United States-Mexico borders, here cultural differences between the two countries are blurred and a atomsphere of transience and crossings dominates. In this exhibition his complex and poignant images capture the humor, pathos, paradox and tragedy of life in a place of perpetual flux, transience and volatility. Photographing primarily in the streets, Webb vividly captures the physical, cultural, economic and symbolic "crossings" or passages that continually blur the lines of demarcation between the two countries. The cross-migration and overlaying of peoples, ideas, beliefs and systems within border zones is a subject that Webb has explored throughout his career.

"I first went to the border in 1975. I worked in black and white then; now I work in colour. My initial fascination with the world of illegal border crossers has expanded to include many other kinds of crossings-cultural, economic, spiritual - Halloween festivities in Mexico, charro celebrations in the United States, U.S college spring breakers in Mexico, Mexican shoppers in the U.S. Culturally interwoven, it is this U.S-Mexico borderland that has come to fascinate me, almost a third country unto itself that is brutally divided-by a river, a fence, a wire - and yet somehow is also one." - Alex Webb

The Artists

Alex Webb

Artist Biography

Alex Webb's photography books include From the Sunshine State: Photographs of Florida, Amazon: From the Floodplains to the Clouds, Under a Grudging Sun: Photographs from Haiti Libere, Hot Light/Half-Made Worlds: Photographs from the Tropics, and the limited edition Dislocations. A member of Magnum Photos since 1979, he has received numerous awards and fellowships. Webb's work has exhibited worldwide, and his images are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the International Centre for Photography. His photographs have been published in the New York Times Magazine, Life, Geo, National geographic, Aperture and many other magazines.