Abstract
The present article is aimed at analyzing two representations of the face of Bobby Sands, a member of the IRA and a 'martyr' of the Republican cause in Northern Ireland. The first is a photograph of Sands in prison, an image that circulated so extensively as to be subsequently used as the basis for a mural realized in Belfast, one of the most celebrated ones in the city.
This constitutes the second case study of article. Through a reflection on the two different visual expressions, the photographic one and the mural one, the article shows how the meaning-effects of the same face can mutate.
Caught between the temporality of history and the demands of a memorial community that represents itself in that face, the public image of Sands is an emblematic example of the utopia of unmediated reading of an essence that the visage is supposed to reveal.