New Work in Progress (WW1)
Projections
Having completed my last stitching project based on trench maps from World War I, I decided to try and superimpose some postcard portraits onto them, of soldiers headed for the Front. In the first (below) I used the photograph of a family which I ‘projected’ onto the map as shown hanging on a washing line.
What strikes me about this image as a whole, is the contrast between now and then as it exists in the contrast between the black and white of the photograph and the colour of the day. This colour, and the sense of the nowness of the present, helps strengthen my own empathetic feelings towards those long since lost – and all but forgotten – to history.
The fact the map hangs on a line like an item of washing, also reinforces the sense of domesticity which is a theme running through some of the postcard portraits, many of which were taken in the backyards of soldiers (or their parents), where evidence of the everydayness of domestic life is in abundance.
One such photograph shows a young couple who’ve recently been married. They stand, unsure of what the future brings, both wearing a look full of apprehension, staring into the lens of the camera, as if this ‘clock for seeing’ as Barthes once referred to them, really could show them the future.
The image onto which their portrait has been projected shows the reverse side of the map, where the threads used to stitch the past together hang like the cut threads of countless lives.
Serre Palimpsest (completed)
I’ve just completed – after several weeks of stitching – a piece of work called ‘Serre Palimpsest’ the creation of which I’ve been documenting on my blog. It became apparent soon after I started this work that this was a piece with two sides which may seem an obvious thing to say, but it seemed to me that the two sides we’re saying different things, just as things below the surface say something different to those above, whilst as the same time remaining connected.
The two images below show the completed work. The first, the front:
The second, the reverse:
The lines stitched in black show the roads before the war (the modern day road system is pretty much the same), the blue stitching and red show the British and German trenches respectively – with No Man’s Land between, and the green stitching shows the modern day field boundaries.
What was interesting about creating the work was how the threads from the reverse of the piece would emerge into the front, mirroring the way pieces of the past (bits of old shell etc.) find their way to the surface after many years below the ground. The cut lines on the reverse made me think of the paths soldiers would have taken to get there; paths which in many cases were cut in the Somme.
Occasionally, the threads would be tied together on the reverse which again made me think of how our lives today are similar to those who died in that their lives were lived lives too; of course their circumstances couldn’t have been more different, but the fact is that the vast statistics of the Somme comprise real individuals.
To take the photographs I hung the piece on the washing line. The weather was unseasonably hot and sunny, much like the weather would have been on the first day of the Battle of the Somme (1st July 1916). As I looked as the work swaying gently in the breeze, I thought about the photographs taken in the back gardens of those who were about to set off for the Front. I was reminded too of the backdrops used in studio-based photographs.
Serre Palimpsest II
I’ve just finished the second phase of a piece of work called Serre Palimpsest the results of which can be seen below.
Reverse side
So far I’ve stitched in the roads around Serre and the British and German trenches from the First World War. Next I’ll cut the fabric again to stitch in the modern day field boundaries.
Serre Palimpsest
Stitched Trench Map – Patterns
Three patterns will be used for this piece of work: 1) a map of the pre-war road system around Serre, France; 2) a map of the First World War trench system around the same area, and 3) a map of the area’s modern day field boundaries.
A single piece of fabric will be cut, firstly according to the pattern of roads.
This same piece will then be re-cut according to the pattern of trenches.
And finally, this will be cut a third time according to modern day field boundaries.
The final stitched piece of fabric might then look something like this:
Looking at the images reminded me of star constellations, and so I inverted two of the images to see how they looked.
See Serre Palimpsest.
Stitched Trench Maps II
I completed my first three stitched ‘trench maps’ today and have popped them in frames ready to be exhibited in Luxembourg. Ideally they wouldn’t be in frames at all and would be presented on a much large scale, but as first versions go I’m pleased. Certainly I can see how I would like to progress them, adding more layers to create kinds of palimpsests.
