Paul Seawright's documentary photographs have a haunting quality about them. His work is as much of the photographer's birthplace, Belfast in Northern Ireland, as of the places that he chronicles in his art. Commissions and personal involvement have taken him to Afghanistan, sub-Saharan Africa and Italy. 

He produces searching photographic investigations of aspects of a fraught political terrain, but they are not of the place itself. For example, the series of photographs entitled Hidden about Afghanistan, which were commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in London, are more about the futility of war in general - an anti-war statement. Landscapes have become "organically corrupted" by the war. 

In his latest work he explores a generic malevolent landscape represented by uninhabited spaces at the edge of cities and forests, in particular around Europe. 

Seawright is involved in documentary film making and teaching. His work has a lasting impact on the viewer because, through his photography, we are invited to witness and reflect on spaces beyond the sphere of contented familiarity.