Seamus Murphy: Strange Love
Spanning the years 2005 to 2019, this remarkable body of work offers a compelling reexamination of the familiar East-West dichotomy. Seamus Murphy turns his camera toward post-industrial landscapes in both America and Russia, revealing a visual conversation that blurs the line between two nations often seen as opposites.
Rather than emphasizing difference, Murphy’s images highlight unexpected parallels—echoes of daily life, labor, and struggle that challenge long-held geopolitical assumptions. By alternating between photographs taken in the U.S. and Russia, the book unsettles our sense of place and identity. One begins to wonder: if these images weren’t labeled, could we even tell which country we’re looking at?
Strange Love invites viewers to sit with that uncertainty. How often might we guess wrong? And what does that say about the power of visual language to disrupt the stories we’ve been told?
While global powers play at rivalry, Murphy’s focus remains with ordinary people—the factory workers, the dreamers, the forgotten—those who bear the real weight of history. His work doesn’t just cross borders; it dissolves them, offering a powerful meditation on the shared human condition in two seemingly opposed worlds.
About the Author
Seamus Murphy is a documentary photographer and filmmaker known for his intimate and poetic visual style. He has received seven World Press Photo awards—including two for portraiture—for his work across Afghanistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Sierra Leone, Peru, the UK, and Ireland. His long-term projects have been widely published and exhibited, with his photographs held in collections such as The Getty Museum, the Imperial War Museum, and FRAC Auvergne.
Murphy has authored several books, including A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan (Saqi, 2008), based on 12 trips to the country between 1994 and 2007, and I Am the Beggar of the World (FSG, 2014), which features Afghan women’s Landay poetry. He collaborated with PJ Harvey on the albums Let England Shake and The Hope Six Demolition Project, leading to the book The Hollow of the Hand (Bloomsbury, 2015) and multimedia exhibitions in London and Arles.
In The Republic (Allen Lane, 2016), he documents a personal photographic journey through Ireland ahead of the 1916 Easter Rising centenary. His forthcoming book, Under a Prisoner’s Moon (2023), examines the complex dynamic between Russia and the U.S.
Murphy made his feature film debut with A Dog Called Money (2019), a documentary about his travels and collaboration with PJ Harvey, which premiered at Berlinale. His second film, The Peculiar Sensation of Being Pat Ingoldsby (2022), explores the world of the eccentric Irish poet.
He has directed films for Channel 4, The New Yorker, UNICEF, and MSF, and earned both an Emmy nomination and the Liberty in Media Prize. His short films for Let England Shake received widespread acclaim, with one—The Words That Maketh Murder—praised by Patti Smith as “a wisp of humanity celebrating the small things.”
