Monument, mentality 2016 (ongoing)
Most of us have a connection to the Great War, when the subject is mentioned stories flood to the surface. This series was first developed for a research AHRC project, ‘Remember Me. The Changing Face of Memorialisation’ under the subtitle, ‘Keep Your Kodak Busy’. These photographs were made with a Kodak Box Brownie No. 2, an unsophisticated camera that was in use at the time of the Great War. Kodak encouraged women to take family photographs to send to their loved ones at the front, ‘snapshots from home’. The simple slogan ‘Kodak as you go!’ was used and as photographs of the everyday became more commonplace ‘It is all worth far more than merely seeing - it’s worth saving.’
In today’s context when digital sharpness seems limitless, and you can photograph beyond what the eye perceives, I chose to work with the soft optics of this very basic camera, to experience photographic technology of the Great War. Travelling to Northern France and Belgium, I photographed monuments and cemeteries that commemorated the millions of war dead. This loose typology has grown to become a comparative study of national identities revealed through the scale and design of their monuments.
These photographs, taken more than a hundred years after the war, were taken with a camera available then, with black and white film, processed and enlarged in the darkroom. The images share the same qualities but depict a different landscape, evidence of the contemporary is present in the growth of the trees and vegetation, beyond the cemetery boundary there are contemporary structures, urban development, rural buildings and evidence of changing agricultural practices, all details that place the photograph in our time, now.
These photographs are quiet, they don’t shout about war. Ambiguities are created in part by technical choices, and through the process of documenting, they could be misinterpreted, unless you look closely it is difficult to know what year they were taken.
For exhibition the location and date of each image is made clear, there is no intent to misdirect the viewer.