6 minute read
Recovering the Past
By Ian Alderman
Does a war really end at an armistice or the signing of a treaty? A new thought-provoking photographic exhibition that comes to the Shrine of Remembrance in the autumn of 2024 explores the long-term legacies of human conflict.
On the Western Front, the past and present intertwine on a daily basis. An estimated 25 per cent of all First World War ammunition failed to explode, and today it remains a corroding legacy lying beneath the fields.
In 2022 alone, DOVO-SEDEE, Belgium’s army bomb disposal team, recovered 14,061 live shells from 2,334 individual collections from the fields and gardens of what once were the battlefields of Passchendaele. Known as the ‘Iron Harvest’, the annual haul will typically weigh in at around 200 tonnes of corroding but still lethal shells. To the population of Northwest Belgium, the explosive consequences of the Great War pose an everpresent and lethal risk.
So, does a war really end at the ceasing of hostilities and the signing of a treaty? How much of the manifold social and physical consequences of wars do we really appreciate? I asked myself these questions as I set about creating the artwork for my exhibition.
Recovering the Past is a photographic exhibition that superimposes historical images of men of the Australian Imperial Force with images of DOVO-SEDEE’s work. Seven years in the making, it confronts the viewer with a sobering portrayal of war’s long-term legacies.
I accompanied DOVO-SEDEE personnel on more than 250 individual collections of ammunition in West Flanders for the 25 images that comprise this exhibition. You’d be forgiven for thinking that sounds excessive, but for the montage photographs of Recovering The Past to achieve the desired visual impact, their production demanded considerations beyond strong composition and photographic technicalities alone.
Camera height, camera angle, direction of light and perspective itself were critical to consider when matching both photographs to create a successful montage image. This information came from my careful analysis of over 200 selected archival images in advance of the project’s start. Compiled into a field guide, the information it contained proved an invaluable tool.
DOVO-SEDEE’s teams routinely collect unexploded ammunition from locations as diverse as farms, construction sites and back gardens. If the location of the ammunition to be collected was suitable for me to photograph, I was given a few short minutes to produce it. In a matter of seconds, I had to identify which archival image to pair with a given location.
Back in the studio, the final montage images were created using two software packages, with each image requiring between two and three days of system work to produce.
Despite being separated by one hundred years of time, the sense of connection between the two groups of men within each artwork is crucial to the exhibition’s visual impact. This connection suggests a team effort; that the century of intervening years has become irrelevant, replaced by a sense of mutual respect and equality. Unique in narrative, this is an exhibition that represents every nation, every man, woman and child that has been impacted by human conflict. Today, through many thousands of dedicated cemeteries and memorials, we as a society rightly remember those who died in battles of the First World War. For its embattled survivors, war widows and orphans, and the mothers who grieved for lost sons, there is a very different story. With no such commemorative sites dedicated to the millions of these men, women and children who endured great personal suffering in the years after the Armistice, their plight has been all but forgotten.
Recovering The Past explores the post-conflict trauma endured by wars’ survivors. In 1974, interviewed about his service during the First World War, Jim McPhee from Drouin, Victoria said, “We thought we managed alright, kept the awful things out of our minds, but now I’m an old man and they come out from where I hid them. Every night.”
More than fifty years after the war’s end, Jim routinely endured torturous recollections of his time in battle. He was just one of many millions of that war’s survivors who suffered longterm psychological trauma from it.
In August 1916, paralysed from the waist down having been shot in the spine, my own great-grandfather was evacuated home from the battlefields of the Somme. He was nursed until his death, some twenty years later by my great-grandmother, who had in her own way, become a victim of the war. Yet there is no monument to her service. My greatgrandparents’ shared plight is the inspiration for this exhibition.
Recovering The Past is not a project of politics and does not side with wars’ victors or vanquished; it is dedicated to raising the profile of human conflicts’ less-appreciated consequences.
DOVO-SEDEE has the most complete First World War ammunition reference facility in existence. Currently totalling 440 different shell types, it has one of every item yet found from the battles of Flanders.
Revealed through farming activity, a hoard of 147 unfired 7.5cm High/explosive shells is recovered by a DOVO-SEDEE team. A similar hoard was found a few meters away, suggesting this was once a line of guns.
The consequences explored in my work are not at all unique to the First World War alone. More than one hundred major wars have been fought since the signing of the Armistice. Recovering the Past and the issues it raises is relevant to all of these wars and those that sadly are likely yet to come.
Ian Alderman is a London-based professional photographer and digital artists.
