About

Up The Lagan in a Bubble is a self-published photobook by Belfast-based photographer Daniel Graham, whose long-standing obsession with the city’s streets has driven the creation of this body of work. For years, Graham has wandered through Belfast with his camera, searching for those fleeting moments of humour, humanity, and strangeness that unfold in the ordinary rhythm of daily life. His photographic story distils the energy of the city, its wit, its tensions, its resilience and the quiet poetry that often goes unnoticed.

Encompassing five years of work, the book gathers a collection of images that form a fresh, contemporary view of Belfast and the people who shape it. Shot exclusively in candid situations, the photographs reveal unguarded slices of life, with moments of sadness, flashes of absurdity, gestures of connection, and scenes that border on the surreal. The resulting narrative is not a linear story but a mosaic, one that captures the spirit of a place constantly balancing between its past and its evolving future.

Up The Lagan in a Bubble is both a love letter to Belfast and an exploration of how a city reveals itself when no one thinks they are being watched. Through Graham’s lens, the familiar becomes unexpected, and the everyday becomes intriguing.

Up The Lagan in a Bubble is a photobook of 40 photographs made on the streets of Belfast between 2020 and 2025. The print aesthetic leans into the grit and immediacy of urban life. The photobook is presented in a deliberately raw format: full bleed, full colour, in-your-face pages printed on uncoated matte stock and held together with a spiral bind.

The print aesthetic of the book leans into the grit and immediacy of urban life. It’s deliberately raw: full-bleed, full-colour, in-your-face pages, all held together with a spiral bind. The stripped-back, tactile production mirrors the street aesthetic of the photographs. The book also includes three tipped-in photographs that sit naturally within the sequence. The front and back covers mirror each other, with the title in English on the front and as Gaeilge on the back, as a nod to the city’s history and its evolving future.