24 HOURS in PASSCHENDAELE
The battle for Passchendale holds a significant place in New Zealand’s military history. On the 4th of October 1917 the New Zealanders took part in a successful attack that easily met all its objectives, advancing the British line by nearly 2,000 yards. Even so 1,853 New Zealanders were injured and more than 449 were killed.
On the 12th of October the same year the New Zealanders were involved in an attack which was a complete disaster. Nothing went to plan and in just two hours, more than 2,800 New Zealand soldiers were killed, wounded or listed as missing – the most disastrous day in New Zealand’s military history.
Above ground the evidence of this war has all but disappeared. Years of effort have restored farm land and woods. Just documenting this landscape with a conventional camera can never convey what went on. I wanted my images to reflect the landscape that the New Zealand soldier’s experienced and give a sense of 1917 and what the soldier saw from his shell hole, “The Soldiers View Point”.
My work is captured on a series of pin-hole cameras that exposes a black & white 5”x4” sheet of film for 24 hours. These dream-like distortions dissolve the intervention of the 21st century allowing the viewer to imagine what might have been.
