The subject matter in this book could be categorised, in descending order, something like this: IRA funerals pics; Sinn FΘin protest pics; Sinn FΘin protests/funerals including children pics; RUC in riot gear pics; Armed soldiers/police with kids in background pics; Gerry Adams carrying IRA coffin pics; Children/old people with riot/protest/wreckage in background pics; IRA/Sinn FΘin martyr pics; Sinn FΘin victorious in election pics; Lots of Tricolors pics; Victorious Sinn FΘin leaders greeted in the US pics.
There it is, the history of Northern Ireland in the past 20 years as seen from one perspective. Admittedly this is a "photobiography" but it is done by a man using the unusual contrivance of a camera and a pair of blinkers. All references to events that might in the slightest way suggest the Provos did anything bad are avoided. There is the picture of Gerry Adams carrying the coffin of the Shankill bomber in October 1993 but no mention of the nine innocent Protestants who were killed.
Catholic nationalists, particularly their children and elderly, are seen as suffering masses downtrodden and oppressed by armed British soldiers (about 10 pics of soldiers in the vicinity of innocent, quizzical child) and jack-booted police (about 20 pics of RUC in riot gear).
Sisters of IRA martyrs, particularly when pictured at funerals, are proudly defiant in images chillingly reminiscent of those of Soviet and Nazi depictions of women. There is one disgustingly gratuitous depiction of the death of the unfortunate Dermott McShane, who stumbled into a riot in the centre of Derry in July 1996 and was crushed by an amoured car. Someone dying in these tragic circumstances deserves better than to have his final moments captured and reproduced for the titillation of the idiot section of the Irish-American market at which this book is presumably aimed.
The photography is poor. I glimpsed first at the inner sleeve and saw what I misread as a message from the famous war photographer Don McCullin. I began looking forward to strong, striking images. But it turned out, when I flipped back, that it wasn't McCullin but the Bloody Sunday and Dublin Bombings writer Don Mullan.
This is the crude depiction of events in Northern Ireland as seen from within the confines of the community of extreme Northern nationalists. It is straight out of An Phoblacht, not reaching for anything more than portraying Protestants, the RUC and British Army as bad and Sinn FΘin and the IRA as good and lovely.
Finally, it inadvertently portrays these family, friends and neighbours as ghouls in the face of death and funerals, protest and violence. This is, forgive the pun, the Addams Family picture album.
Jim Cusack is Security Editor of The Irish Times