2021 - Gilles Peress’ epic summation of his work in Northern Ireland published by Steidl

In 1972, Magnum photographer Gilles Peress photographed the British Army’s massacre of civilians on Bloody Sunday in Derry, and he returned to Northern Ireland again in the 1980s. Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, Peress’ 1,960-page summation of his work in Northern Ireland, was thirty years in the making. It places scenes of everyday life in 1970s and 1980s Northern Ireland alongside harrowing images of violence and grief. He describes Whatever You Say, Say Nothing as a work of ‘documentary fiction’, as it organises a decade of photographs across 22 fictional ‘days’ to articulate the sense of a conflict that seemed endless. The epic work comes in two volumes with an accompanying ‘almanac’.