The Swallowing Tree by David Farrell

David Farrell made his first photograph of what he would subsequently term The Swallowing Tree during the first official search for the bodies of Kevin McKee and Seamus Wright at Coghalstown Wood, Wilkinstown in 1999. These young men belonged to the Disappeared, a small group of people that had been killed and secretly buried by the IRA during the conflict in Northern Ireland. These disappearances, which occurred during the seventies and early eighties, were the result of a policy of internal policing of the Republican movement and the wider Catholic community with Kevin and Seamus being amongst the first to endure this fate in October 1972. The revelation in ’99 that this place and other locations associated with the missing people were in the south of Ireland came as a final twist – in death they had been exiled from their homeland, north of the border.

Published by Latent Image Editions
Edition of 500
Hardback

16 cm22 cm1 cm