A new exhibition features dozens of portraits of musicians spanning 50 years of punk in Northern Ireland – and all of them were shot on film.
Stuart Bailie is a former NME journalist and BBC radio host, author and founder of the Oh Yeah! Music Centre in Belfast. He was a schoolboy in Belfast when punk burst into Troubles-era Northern Ireland through bands like Stiff Little Fingers and The Undertones.
‘Alter Your Native Land Punk in the North, 1976-2026‘ opened at the Oh Yeah! Music Centre last week and features portraits of some of those Seventies stalwarts alongside some of the following generations of Belfast punk musicians.
Bailie, who had taken photos from his days as a punk musician and journalist, and said he learned lots from working alongside NME photographers such as Anton Corbijn and Pennie Smith in the 1980s. He shot all 45 portraits on Ilford HP5 film on Olympus OM SLRs and a Hasselblad medium format camera.
Bailie spoke to Kosmo Foto just as the exhibition opened.
How did this come about?
Basically, I’m a film camera enthusiast and a fan of rebellious music, so this was the perfect fit. I was a teenager in Belfast when punk arrived. Pretty soon I was listening to home-grown records by The Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers, Rudi and many others. With the 50th anniversary of punk I thought it would be worthwhile to document the old punk faces, but also to feature the young contenders. I had been thinking a lot about the Steve Pyke book, Philosophers, which was a series of tight, unflinching head shots of these fascinating characters and their lived-in expressions.
The exhibition title, Alter Your Native Land is a quote from the Stiff Little Fingers classic ‘Alternative Ulster’.
How did you choose the subjects?
I’ve been making considered portraits for around 25 years, so I already had some images of the musicians in my files. I played in a few punk bands back in the day, so I was basically photographing my mates. Since the exhibition idea was hatched in the early summer, I’ve been frantically setting up sessions – around 30 portraits in the last four months. I wanted to get the bigger names, and most of them gave me their time. But I also wanted to celebrate the fans and the people who worked in the record shops, like Terri Hooley from Good Vibrations. I’ve got 45 hand-printed images on the walls and there are at least 50 years between the oldest veteran and the fresh-faced, snarling upstarts.
Why did you choose film?
I fell in love with the Olympus OM cameras after seeing one in a second-hand shop. The
simplicity of the OM-1 and the beautiful rendering of the lenses got me properly started. Then I discovered the work of Jane Bown, who used the same camera for her wonderful portraits in The Observer. Her book, Faces, is a constant inspiration. I also shoot on digital but I don’t have the same emotional connection with the results.
What cameras and film did you use for the project?
I still use a couple of OM-1s and an OM-4 but they’re not always reliable and it’s becoming a challenge to get them repaired. Ten years ago, I got a good deal on a Hasselblad 500C/M, which is brilliant if there’s time for a more formal session. More recently, I took ownership an old Leica M6. I mostly use Ilford HP5 film, which forgives a lot of my mistakes. I develop and print my own pictures at home. It’s all so enjoyable.
The punk you cover in this project is much more than just those first sparks in the 1970s. How did you see it evolving?
The Belfast punk scene evolved in a city that was 10 years into an awful conflict, crossing the threshold of 2,000 dead in 1978. The musicians were mostly male and there was a lot of aggression. I wanted to trace the DNA of rebellious music that runs into new acts like Problem Patterns, Chalk, Tramp and Éabha. Such acts are often female or non-binary. They’re still angry but maybe more politically astute than we were.
Cities like Belfast and Derry are going through another golden age of furious music and I was keen to celebrate this, in a family album.
Who are the subjects you’re most grateful to have included?
The Undertones and Stiff Little Fingers played a show at Custom House Square in Belfast in August this year. I had a little backstage corner at the site with the Hasselblad and a tripod. The band members gave me a few minutes each to snap away. On behalf of my teenage self, I was really delighted.
Alter Your Native Land: Punk in the North, 1976-2026 is showing at the Oh Yeah! Music Centre in Belfast until 27 February 2027.
Buy Stuart Bailie’s books on Bandcamp.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
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