Memory, Memorial

Research output: Non-textual formArtefact

Abstract

“Memory, Memorial”, Dunree Military Fort, Artlink, Co.Donegal, July 2006.This exhibition is a reworking of an earlier project based on five individuals who served in the Second World War. The historical background of Dunree Military Fort in WW2 as both lookout post for invading forces and base for the neutral Irish forces provided an interesting change of context for this body of work. “Memory, Memorial” was developed in collaboration with the Royal British Legion and the Royal Irish Rifles Regiment, Belfast. The project involved interviewing a number of Second World War Veterans and photographing five of them in their original WW2 uniforms. The exhibition included fourteen c-type colour prints and a 6 minute repeated video sequence displayed on a monitor. The work explores the relationships between public memorial and private memory. It is also concerned with differences in perception: between those who have experienced these events at first hand and those who can only imagine what it was like through other’s recollections and archival material.This work also draws parallels between points of vulnerability in these individual’s lives. As young men these bodies were in proximity to physical danger. Here again, as elderly men, their bodies have become synonymous with physical vulnerability.The work raises questions about our perceptions of historical events and the hegemony of the single authoritative viewpoint. The fragmentation of the sitter in the image, further serves to question traditions in portraiture and conventions associated with the portrayal of the male hero figure.The photographs create distance from the subject through the anonymity of the model, while evoking intimacy through the detailing of delicate sections of the body. Photographs from this project were also exhibited in “Warning Shots” , Royal Armouries Museum Leeds, 2000, “Revealing Views, Images from Ireland”, Royal Festival Hall, London 1999, in “Troubled, Photography and Video from N.Ireland”, September 1998, The Light Factory, N. Carolina, USA,. Gallery of Photography, Dublin, 1997.See Source Magazine review archive, www.source.ie/issues/issues0120/issue11/is11revmemmem.html
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationBelfast, N.Ireland
Publication statusPublished (in print/issue) - 4 Aug 1997

Bibliographical note

Outputmediatype: Photography and video

Keywords

  • Photography
  • video art
  • portraiture
  • military institution
  • social history
  • gender
  • Second World War history

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