I found a census of my family on my fathers side from 1901 and 1911.  In it I found out my great grandfather was a stone mason/farmer.  The whole family were primarily badly off, uneducated farmers.  There were 5 children in the family in 1901 and 7 in 1911 so it was a fairly large family.  From all the research I've done on the topic, I got the same message.  These lower class people were poor, starving, struggling and oppressed on an international scale.  I wanted to tell their sad story through images that don't directly relate to them.  I wanted to allow these images to be interpreted in many ways and at the same time get across the sense of hardship/anger at their situation that my ancestors would have felt.  An example of such a situation is one of my uncles called Denis Doherty who was evicted from his home for his inability to pay rent in 1862.  I wanted to get these feelings across yet avoid representing the scene directly.