Despite its Irish focus, Vote No.2 feels pertinent in the UK too, which has seen five prime ministers in seven years, all from the same party. So what does he make of the current crop in Westminster? “I think it’s all going very well… No, of course not, it’s a shit show,” he says, criticising how British politics has become more rightwing of late. “Having seen behind the curtain it’s hard to feel in any way optimistic about the future of politics in this country.”
Duffy won the Vienna Photobook award in 2015 for the book’s predecessor, Vote No.1, which draws on posters from the same local election campaign. That presents gruesome closeups of the candidates’ faces, disfigured by rips and zip ties holding them to lamp posts. Then, it was about disgust – this time, disdain.
“What’s interesting for me is when you take something intended for one purpose and use it for another,” says Duffy. “Politics isn’t the most fun subject to engage with but to be able to take these identically posed faces with their vaseline smiles and turn them into a sort of kids book on politics – or a criminal identikit – it is fun.”