Joe Laverty

Declan, Lough Neagh Fisherman, 2025.

Photograph | Unframed: 66 x 56.5 cm

‘It is believed that eel fishing on Lough Neagh dates back to the Bronze Age, meaning that Declan comes from a long line of eel fishers on the Lough. However, that tradition is under threat with the annual blooms of blue-green algae that are suffocating the fragile ecosystem of Lough Neagh. The eel fishing season was stopped after only two weeks in 2025, and a combination of pollution, extraction and poor regulation threatens to end this tradition for good.’ - Joe Laverty.

Joe Laverty is a Tyrone-based photographic artist and filmmaker. He completed an MFA in Photography at Ulster University in 2022. His work investigates the intersection of extraction industries and historical narratives within the rural Irish landscape. His images convey a sense of stillness, abandonment, and the subtle tension between nature and industrial intervention. In Shallow Waters, his current study of Lough Neagh, Laverty looks at the way myth and tradition sit alongside intensive farming and heavy industry, and reflects on the lived reality of Ireland’s complicated relationship with its natural environment.

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