Conflict Time Photography.

Good evening friends, family and mice -
I promised myself that I would write about the exhibition I went to last Tuesday for my mother's birthday outing, I also promised I would do a detailed post about my Christmas decorations this year - So tonight is that night!

Without any more hesitation I give you my experience of the "Conflict Time Photography" exhibition at the Tate Modern (In London for those of you who don't know)

The "Conflict Time Photography" exhibition was unheard of to me, I had previously been to the Tate Modern and so I knew it's style and I was expecting an abstract and interesting display - However I didn't quiet expect to experience what I did.

"Conflict, Time, Photography takes it's starting point from the great challenge of looking back, considering the past without becoming frozen in the process." - this was written in a booklet given to us on entering the space. It's a few days later and so I cannot possibly remember everything I saw but there are some parts which I feel I must share with you and so I implore you to go and see the exhibition for yourself. Trust me, it's worth it!

The rooms were set out depending on how many years had past between the conflict and the photographs on display. These started from "moments later" and continued in rough decades until we reached 100 years later. The conflicts included were vast, not focused on any particular war like so many other exhibitions but ranged from the Crimea (1853-1856) to the present day conflicts of Afghanistan and Iraq.

This exhibition was unlike any other, when you imagine war photography you think of in the action, right on the front line, dead bodies and bloody scenes. Here? No, none of that. In fact in the entire gallery I saw one photo of some skeletons and that was it. Instead the exhibition focuses on what happens after, on the scenery and the artifacts left behind. From areal photographs of a desert strewn with machine debris to part of a spectacle found fused to someones eye socket. The most interesting part was you that you had to read the text alongside the image. All too often we see a photograph or look at some art and move on. We never stop to think. This exhibition made you do that, it forced you to see these landscapes and these objects in a new light and it did it well.

"Shot at Dawn" Chloe Dewe Mathews

The most harrowing photographs which left the biggest impression on me were in the last room, they had been taken 99 years after WW1 entitled "Shot at Dawn". Chloe Dewe Mathews went back to some of the places where around 1.000 English, Belgian and French soldiers were shot for desertion. On the anniversary of their deaths, at the rough time they were shot Mathews did her own shooting, taking haunting photographs of normal landscapes where men were killed because they were, in most cases, too afraid to continue fighting. It's very easy to forget about war, what happens and the after effects - or in this case the lack of. When contemplating "Shot at Dawn" I felt a strange sense of unease, the same as if you were looking at a graveyard or photographs of dead bodies, people died here, and now it's been turned to art.


The exhibition really bought home the sense that we need to both look back and look forwards, that no amount of time can make up for what we have done to each other and done to our planet. Once you do something you cannot take that action back - I'm sure if we could go backwards we wouldn't have shot those deserters, we wouldn't have bombed Hiroshima and we wouldn't have followed Thatcher into war. But we did. Maybe not you and I, but as a human race we did those horrible, unthinkable things and now? Now we are left with the scars and memories and history textbooks telling us what we did and what others did wrong.

The worst part of the exhibition, above all of this, was the idea that we so often blame other people, So easily we can say "WWI and WWII were not our fault, we were doing what we had to do." but sometimes that's wrong, sometimes we were the ones, and by we I meant England, who caused the problems, who hurt the people and who helped bomb cities. I think we often forget that no matter how horrible others have been to us, we have been just as bad to them in return, if not worse. You could see separate galleries showing photos from the different wars but by juxtaposing Vietnam (1956-1975) to the Paris Commune (1871) via both World Wars, Afghanistan and everything in between then you can see a much larger picture and to be perfectly honest with you? It's scary.

I got a bit morbid there - I apologise, but in all seriousness if you get a chance go to the Tate Modern, then please do. Pay the mere £14.50 for entry and marvel at the forgotten moment, the left behind objects and the hidden pictures from a century of War and Conflict.

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/conflict-time-photography
Tate Modern: Exhibition
26 November 2014 – 15 March 2015
Adult £14.50 (without donation £13.10)
Concession £12.50 (without donation £11.30)
Under 12s go free (up to four per parent or guardian)

Anyway good friends, I'm heading to bed as it's very early in the morning! I shall show you my Christmas decorations later (I'm very excited for this) in the mean time, do have a look into the exhibition, it really is worth going to!
Sleep well and lots of love,
HarrietCorey
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