Donovan Wylie became the youngest ever full member of Magnum Photos in 1997, when he was just 26. Born in Belfast in 1971, he has explored the architecture of conflict in Northern Ireland and, more recently, in Iraq, where he hopes to return later this year. One of his images is going on show in the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester from 25 September – 23 January, in a group exhibition called The Land Between Us: place, power and dislocation. BJP took the opportunity to catch up with him.

BJP: Your work is going on show in an exhibition about landscape art, do you see your work as landscape photography?

DW: Obviously it is, but I never think of it in that way. I’m interested in how structures are settled within a landscape, I’m not interested in the pictorialist aspects of photography.

BJP: Do you think of it more in terms of the New Topographics or what’s been termed aftermath photography?

DW: I don’t think of it as anything, but I guess I’d identify more with the New Topographics than anything pictorialist. Aftermath photography has been around for a while – some of it is genuine and some isn’t and I think you can always tell the difference. The negative side of it is that it is fashionable, and if it’s not genuine it can feel pretentious. But the genuine side of it is fascinating. It’s a sort of revived New Topographics, and the funny thing about the New Topographics or aftermath photography is that it feels very peopled.

BJP: Why did you start photographing in this way? We interviewed Paul Seawright earlier in the year, and he said that he had avoided photojournalism because he had grown up in Northern Ireland – he felt it didn’t represent the place he’d grown up in, and didn’t help people to live in different ways. Did you feel the same way?

DW: No. For me, growing up in Belfast forced me to look at the subject, and forced me to look at the Maze prison. But I couldn’t find a way to represent it. It was a very complicated thing, and whatever I did I felt I was taking a position [eg on one side of the conflict or another]. In the end I realised that the prison was a machine, a piece of architecture designed to do a job. Literally and conceptually it was designed to capture men, so I started to shoot it like that. So it wasn’t really a reaction to a type of photography; it was a reaction to a subject.

BJP: Do you feel you are shooting the same thing in Iraq?

DW: Yes, I’m looking at the architecture. For example, the photograph in the Whitworth shows a Sangar [a small, temporary fortified position] in Northern Ireland – Sangar is a term from the Afghan Great Wars [against Britain in the 19th Century]. When they were demolished, there were literally some elements that were taken to Afghanistan. I find that fascinating, how the architecture is used.

BJP: Is it the architecture of occupation?

DW: That’s for the viewer to decide – I’m just interested in what they look like. They’re like odd sculptures, they’re functional and brutal, fragile and frail.

BJP: In Scrapbook you mixed up different types of vernacular photography and cuttings, do you think you’ll do the same thing in Iraq?

DW: No. The Scrapbook started 12 years ago, and it was less a project than a personal obsession. It was a compulsion. I was trying to make sense of what I grew up with and move on from it, both returning home and leaving home. It was a rite of passage. It would be impossible for me to do that in Iraq.

BJP: Does it feel very different to work in Iraq, when you don’t have that depth of personal experience?

DW: Yes and no – in the Green Zone [in Baghdad] I could see concrete structures I recognised from Northern Ireland, but there were palm trees everywhere. But it wasn’t about Iraq. I was shooting in the Green Zone when the Americans were occupying it, and it was a Western bubble. It was like being on a rock concert on tour – the band moves in with all this paraphernalia, and you have to have a pass to move into the various areas. I was trying to represent that, not the country.

But in another sense, it is still personal. I am a photographer, a documentary photographer recording my own experiences, my own history and my own time. Iraq is an extreme form of that. This is the time, and it’s my job to record it. Also I find this stuff fascinating, I enjoy looking at it. I have no real agenda other than that it’s interesting.

BJP: You’ve said that photography is an imperfect medium.

DW: Photography is highly subjective. It’s a very complicated and very interesting medium, but it’s also one of the best mediums for dealing with reality. It’s all about the object [being photographed]. I was against the Maze being demolished, for example, because I thought people should be able to experience it. I think the world is infinitely more interesting than anything you can say about it, and photography is a way to look at it. But that’s just my taste, it’s a broad church.