About this Project:
The work in these pages started as the result of re-visiting Dunkirk with my father who served there in 1940 with the London Irish Rifles. Oddly enough he featured in what has become one of the iconic images of that battle but what came as a complete suprise to me was the extraordinary memory which he had for what appeared to me to be feature-less fields. His soldier's eye was able to match the angles of church towers to the trenches they had dug and for the first time I appreciated the importance to the infantryman of even the merest ripple on the surface of a field. We visited Ypres and I watched him as he stood erect at the Menin Gate, fighting back his tears: it was an emotion I had never been exposed to before and I began to visit other battlefields and started taking pictures.
The men of 1914-18 largely saw the land torn apart and stripped of its covering mantle of grass and trees, it's bones literally laid bare as they sought shelter within its protective skin. Today living memory of those times has, sadly, all but disappeared but the landscape which was the setting for those tumultuous events still reflects its violent past. Nature may have healed the tortured landscape of the battle but the searching eye can frequently spot the place where concrete and steel push upwards from the soil like some strange fungus and the imprint of fighting trenches indicate where men fought and died. For me, the challenge is to combine the elements of light and land to document the dramatic history of these fields.
Working in conjunction with Prof Richard Holmes, the eminent military historian and writer, it is my intention over the next few years to document the fields of battle of the Western Front as they are today, almost 100 years after their devastation. These fields extend over 600 kms across Belgium and northern and eastern France and as we near the centenary we wish to establish a record of their present state.
The whole project is destined to provide a visual resource for books, exhibitions and educational purposes so your comments are always welcome and if you would like to extend your vision and come and see the land as the soldiers saw it, then please come and join me on one of my "Battlefield Vision" tours.
Recently I have had exhibitions in Belgium, New Zealand and Canada and I am currently engaged on a project with the French Government to produce a series of exhibitions for the centenary period 2014 - 2018.
About Me:
After studying Geography at Oxford, in the early 1970's I began my life as a photo-journalist by covering "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland. Here I became associated with the New York picture agency, Black Star and over thirty years later I am still in the fortunate position of being paid to do what I actually love doing - taking photographs.
Being a photographer is an extraordinary life - it certainly beats working for a living - and has enabled me to visit over 60 countries around the world, working for a wide range of clients such as ABC-TV, BBC, Anti-Slavery International, British Red Cross, European Commission, National Geographic, New York Times, Shell, "Time" & "Time Life.
This project is proving to be a marvellous experience - I am proud to have qualified as the 38th badged member of the Guild of Battlefield Guides whose members are proving an invaluable source of both practical and scholarly information on any subject I enquire about. As I travel I never cease to be amazed by the tolerant acceptance of my frequently bizarre requests and the extraordinary efforts which people make to understand my mangled "franglais". In a venture of this scale it is almost inevitable that errors will creep in: please accept my apologies if you spot anything you consider inaccurate and let me know so that I can ensure the integrity of this collection.
And finally my thanks to the designer of this web-site, Geza Turi who has accepted all my changes with total equanimity and has done a great job on a tight budget.
Mike St Maur Sheil
February 2008