David Farrell began photographing the searches for ‘the disappeared’ in 1999. These were people who had been abducted from within their own communities in Northern Ireland, murdered and secretly buried across the border in the south. As part of the peace process information about these burial sites came to light and forensic searches began which Farrell photographed extensively. A book based on the work, Innocent Landscapes, came as a result of winning the European Publishers Award for Photography in 2001. Farrell continued to photograph the sites as the searches were periodically resumed.

Small Acts of Memory is a body of work within the larger project The Disappeared (1999-2015) that concentrates on Coghalstown Wood, reputed to be the burial site of Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee who disappeared in 1972. Farrell has exhibited internationally, including Houston FotoFest, 2006, on four occasions at the Festival Internazionale di Fotografia, Rome and in China in 2008 and 2010. Recent exhibitions include Before, During, After… Almost, RHA, 2016 and Post-Picturesque: Photographing Ireland, Carlton College, USA, 2017; A Name Unmade: Francis Ledwidge (1887-1917), Solstice Arts Centre, April, 2017 and the RHA Annual Exhibition, 2017.