"The Best Exhibition I Have Ever Seen."
The impacts of war are global and timeless; between them, they have afflicted the lives of millions of human beings. Despite a war’s end, for many of its survivors, the long-term social and physical legacies which war creates are only just beginning.
Unique in narrative, Recovering The Past is a ground-breaking photographic exhibition which explores the impact of wars’ legacies on society. In a stark challenge to convention, Recovering The Past is not an exhibition of war itself, but one of people impacted by it. In this thought-provoking contemporary work, the long-term social and physical consequences of war are laid bare.
Significantly, this is an exhibition warns of a future through depicting the past. With human-conflict an ever-present reality, Recovering The Past is effectively future-proofed; the stories this work reveals are not historical relics, but sobering templates of all wars to come.
War’s dead are rightly commemorated, its survivors rarely acknowledged. Through its focus on those survivors, Recovering the Past addresses that imbalance. Further, this work rightly states that victim status should not be confined to those persons injured or killed through war, but also to those bereaved by it.
For every man that has lost his life to a war, one or more women will be grieving his loss. Recovering The Past asserts that these women are themselves victims of war. In its attributing victim status to every man and woman impacted by war, gender equality pervades throughout this exhibition.
Unexploded ammunition, a physical legacy of all conflicts, is brought to the fore through this exhibitions’ twenty-five striking images. Produced in full co-operation with the Belgian armed forces, the ongoing recovery of unexploded First World War shells from the former battlefields of Flanders present a stark reality; a reality that pervades former battlefields the world over.
Internationally exhibited, and with over 150,000 visitors to date, through its harmonious use of the artist’s own imagery, and historic poignant personal memoirs, this multi-layered project takes a novel approach to explain a less appreciated, but globally relevant situation.
A veteran of display at the United Nations, this exhibition has subsequently featured as a component of Belgium’s centenary commemorations to the Great War, and more recently, a near seven year long tour of Australia galleries. Exhibited at nearly thirty venues across four nations, Recovering The Past has an impressive history of public display.
A compelling, visual exploration of post-conflict achievement and reconciliation, Recovering The Past brings the past and present together through a series of striking montage images.
The Great War: the project's foundation
Today, through many thousands of dedicated cemeteries and memorials, society rightly remembers the men who died in battles of the Great War. For its embattled survivors, war-widows and orphans, and the mothers who grieved for lost sons, a very different story exists. With no such commemorative sites dedicated to the millions of these men, women and children who endured great personal suffering in the years after the Armistice, their plight has been all but forgotten.
In giving them a long overdue and much deserved voice, Recovering The Past raises the profile of these people and makes them ambassadors to our future.
Millions in number, and from conflicts the world-over, the voices of wars’ victims are rarely heard. In 1974 – more than fifty years after the Armistice – Australian First World War veteran Jim McPhee said:
“We thought we managed alright, kept the awful things out of minds, but now I’m an old man they come out from where I hid them. Every night.”
McPhee was far from alone. The Great War had taken a terrible toll, with its aftermath impacting the populations of nations the world over. The war’s consequences on its survivors were not restricted to its returning veterans – for whom long-term mental health issues and suicide were to become common place – but also to the millions of women whose men were destined never to return.
Every war since and every war yet to come creates the same legacy. A legacy that is immune to national boundaries, cultures and political systems, a legacy that is not confined to the battlefields alone.
Amputee servicemen of the Great War. There is no dedicated memorial to wars’ survivors; it’s traumatised returning personnel, war-widows and orphans, and those grief-stricken through loss, are largely forgotten. Recovering The Past raises their profile, bringing their less-appreciated plight to the fore.
DOVO-SEDEE: responding to a physical legacy of war
There is no exhibition like Recovering The Past. By visually combining the past and the present it warns of the trauma that is likely to follow any future war. Produced in coordination with the Belgian Army bomb-disposal team, the project takes its viewer on a pictorial journey through the complex and high-risk operation to recover and destroy century-old, unexploded ammunition from the former battlefields of Flanders.
“I make several hundred collections of shells from the Flanders region each year…”
The sobering words of a serving member of the Belgian Army’s bomb-disposal team. One of the thousands of personnel who have served in this unit since its creation in 1920, it’s just one of many such teams that operate worldwide on a daily basis.
Unexploded munitions from past human conflicts will collectively total in the hundreds of millions. This long-term physical consequence of war claims more innocent victims every year. Despite the obvious dangers, the humanitarian mission carried out by bomb-disposal engineers is not just essential, it is also largely unseen. Recovering The Past raises the profile of their work.
A DOVO-SEDEE team recover a hoard of 148 unfired shells from a field in West Flanders.
Limited edition prints
Limited-edition, archival-quality prints from this exhibition are available for purchase in three distinct sizes. Each print will feature the image name, its unique edition number and the artist’s signature.
Ian Alderman, Artist, and creator of Recovering The Past
The Exhibition's Imagery: Pointing To A Likely Future
A photograph is a record of a past event. Recovering The Past challenges this convention; it points its viewer firmly towards the future.
It depicts two distinct groups of men with origins a century apart, but united through a tragic conflict, to convey a striking and sensitive message of post-conflict achievement and resolution. Do the images reveal a team effort? That’s for you, the viewer, to decide.
The project does not feature any scenes of war; this is not a project about a war. It has always been my intention to make this story approachable to all because the story of the enduring consequence of war is important. The story of those left behind is little-appreciated. Everyone needs to engage with it.
“The most harrowing, touching explanation of what war does that I think I’ve ever viewed. It brought tears to my eyes & shivers down my spine. Just fantastic.”
The intervening century of time between the two groups of depicted men is an irrelevance – all men who feature in this work are treated as equals. Equality is evident in this image, through the mirroring of a simple administrative task.
This Exhibition Matters
Unexploded ammunition and conflict-induced human trauma are legacies of all wars. Hundreds of wars have been fought since the Armistice of 1918, with each creating comparable legacies for successive generations to deal with, a situation likely to continue with wars yet to come.
For as long as war exists, the message conveyed in Recovering The Past will remain for-ever relevant.
History
Exhibited at twenty-seven venues across four nations, and viewed by more than 150,000 people, Recovering The Past’s narrative is one of timeless significance.
Mission
With its narrative of global relevance, artist Ian Alderman is striving to bring this human-focused exhibition to ever more international audiences.
Vision
That this exhibition will contribute to our broader understanding of the post-conflict world.