ImageDerry: A Living Photo Archive of Derry and the North West of Ireland

Guildhall Press have published over 300 titles since our first booklet in 1979. Most have these have contained some type of images or photographs of Derry and its hinterland to illustrate the story being told. A curated selection of these images can be found separately in our companion website – ImageDerry (www.imagederry.com). ImageDerry is where the city’s history is seen, not just told. It is a growing digital archive of photographs created by local people and preserved by Guildhall Press – from everyday street scenes to the big moments that shaped the city, nearby County Donegal and the wider NW region.

What makes ImageDerry different is provenance. Many images come from local photographer archives and private collections: prints, negatives, and slide sets that were never intended for the wider internet. In ImageDerry, those images are digitised, organised, and connected to context so that they can be discovered responsibly by local residents, Derry diaspora, researchers, general visitors, historians, academics, journalists, designers, schools, and anyone who cares about the North West’s visual record.

If you’ve ever stood at a street corner in Derry and wondered, “What used to be here?”, or if you’ve tried to remember a shopfront, a mural, a bus route, a skyline, or a family face from decades past, ImageDerry gives you a practical way to look again.

Explore ImageDerry here: ImageDerry

Why ImageDerry exists

Derry has been photographed for generations, but photographs are easily lost: negatives deteriorate, family albums disperse, and local knowledge can disappear in a single lifetime. ImageDerry is Guildhall Press’s way of keeping these images visible, searchable, and connected to place.

The archive is organised around clear hubs so that visitors can move naturally from theme to theme: Discover Derry, Derry’s Walls, Free Derry Corner, Derry Girls locations, murals, cityscapes, people and personalities, and County Donegal – with each hub leading into galleries and sub-galleries. The result is simple to browse, but deep enough for serious research.

How people use the ImageDerry archive

• Visitors planning a walk: use ImageDerry as a visual guide to landmarks, viewpoints, and routes.
• Schools and teachers: use photographs as primary sources to discuss change over time and local identity.
• Family history and the diaspora: spot familiar streets, workplaces, and community events that rarely appear in mainstream archives.
• Writers, historians and journalists: locate images quickly by theme and place before going deeper into specific collections.
• Designers and documentary makers: find visual references and enquire about usage where appropriate.

Local photographers and collections

ImageDerry draws on photographer and community collections, including archives associated with
Hugh Gallagher,
Raymond Craig,
Willie Curran,
Joe McAllister,
Brendan McKeever,
and Sam Hippsley, alongside the wider
Guildhall Press archive.

Each collection adds a different view: documentary work, street life, community events, changing architecture, and the evolving visual culture of the city.

This matters because local photographers notice what outsiders miss: the ordinary places where life happens. That is why ImageDerry includes images that are difficult to locate elsewhere online – not because they are hidden, but because they were never digitised or indexed in a way that makes them discoverable.

If you are exploring ImageDerry for the first time, start with one hub you care about, then follow the internal links to related galleries. That browsing journey is where the archive becomes personal: one familiar corner leads to another, one decade answers questions about the next.

What you can explore in ImageDerry

Free Derry Corner and the Bogside

The Free Derry Corner/Wall is one of the most photographed surfaces in Ireland – but the meaning is in the details: the changing messages on the former gable frontage and back panel, the people standing nearby, the street context, and the moments when the wall became a backdrop to community life.

ImageDerry brings together multiple viewpoints from local collections so you can compare how the same place looks across time, from different angles and different storytellers. For visitors, it can deepen a Bogside walk. For researchers, it provides visual evidence of change in streetscape and public messaging.

Derry’s Walls, gates, and the city in layers

The Walls are often described as a single landmark, but they are really a route through the city: ramps, bastions, gates, sightlines, and views that connect the old town to newer streets. ImageDerry’s Walls hub links out to galleries of the Walls in use – not only postcards, but lived city scenes with people, weather, and everyday movement.

If you know Derry well, you can use the archive to pinpoint where an image was taken and how the city’s edges have shifted. If you are visiting, the photos help you spot the viewpoints worth seeking out.

Murals of Derry: public art, politics, and community memory

Derry’s murals are a changing public record – commemorative, political, artistic, and local. ImageDerry helps visitors understand murals as a timeline: what replaced what, what survived, and what the surrounding streets looked like when the paint was fresh.

Because murals change, older mural photographs quickly become hard to find. ImageDerry’s galleries make it easier to trace the evolution of specific walls and areas over time.

The River Foyle, the Peace Bridge, and modern Derry

The River Foyle is Derry’s constant, and the Peace Bridge and Ebrington Square are part of its modern re-connection. ImageDerry includes cityscape photographs that show how the riverfront has changed – from working river scenes to contemporary skyline views.

These images are especially useful for ‘then and now’ comparisons: the same bend of the river, the same viewpoint, the same light – but a different city.

Derry Girls: places you can actually visit

For many visitors, Derry Girls opened the city to the world. ImageDerry’s Derry Girls hub connects real locations to photographic context – streets, corners, landmarks and neighbourhood views – so people can see the city beyond the screen and understand how place shapes story.

If you are planning a visit, pair the hub with a walk through the city centre and the riverfront. If you live locally, the archive is a reminder that the most recognisable places also carry decades of everyday history.

County Donegal: the wider North West

ImageDerry also reaches beyond the city into County Donegal, capturing the coast, towns, rural life, and the shared North West experience. If your own family story crosses the border between Derry and Donegal, these photographs help connect place names to real streets, harbours, schools, workplaces, and everyday scenes.

The Donegal hub is useful for visitors planning day trips and for locals who want to revisit places that have changed over time. It sits naturally alongside the Derry hubs, so you can move from landscapes and villages to the city’s social and cultural history without losing context.

Derry People and Personalities: faces and community life

Not every story is a landmark. ImageDerry’s People and Personalities section brings together portraits and community life: individuals, groups, and moments from public events, work, sport, music, and local culture. It’s the closest thing to a visual “who’s who” of everyday Derry across different decades.

This section is especially useful for family history, schools, and researchers looking for context around names and neighbourhoods. It also helps visitors understand the people behind the places—how the city presents itself, and how that presentation changes over time.