"The Best Exhibition I Have Ever Seen."
The impacts of war are both manifold and complex. Despite a war’s end, for many of its survivors, the long-term social and physical legacies which human conflict creates are only just beginning.
Recovering The Past is a ground-breaking photographic exhibition which explores the impact of wars’ legacies on society.
In a stark challenge to convention, this is not an exhibition of war itself, but one of people impacted by it. A sensitive and thought-provoking contemporary work, through which the long-term social and physical consequences of war are laid bare.
It rightly asserts that victim status should not be confined to those persons injured or killed through war, but also to those bereaved by it.
Significantly, this 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.
Wars’ dead are rightly commemorated, its survivors are rarely acknowledged. Through its focus on those survivors, Recovering the Past addresses that imbalance. Gender itself is no defence against the ravages of war. Through attributing victim status to every man and woman impacted by war, equality pervades throughout this exhibition.
Internationally exhibited, and with over 150,000 visitors to date, through its twenty-five striking images and poignant personal memoirs, this multi-layered project takes a novel approach to explain a less understood, but globally relevant tragedy.
Displayed at the United Nations, as a component of Belgium’s centenary commemorations to the Great War, and latterly, a six year long tour of Australia, exhibited at nearly thirty venues across four nations, Recovering The Past has an impressive track record.
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.
Recovering The Past raises the profile of these people. In giving them a long overdue and much deserved voice, they have now become 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:
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 who 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.
Each and every war since, has created ever more of these now familiar legacies. Legacies that are immune to national boundaries and political systems, legacies that are 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
Recovering The Past is an exhibition like no other. Produced in coordination with the Belgian army’s 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 the past century of human-conflict will collectively total in the hundreds of millions. This long-term physical consequence of war claims more innocent victims with every passing year. Despite the obvious dangers, the humanitarian mission carried out by bomb-disposal engineers is not just essential, it is also largely unseen. Through this exhibition’s images of the work of Belgium’s DOVO-SEDEE team, Recovering The Past raises the profile of the work of all such teams who routinely undertake an extraordinarily challenging task.
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: Looking To A Likely Future
A photograph is a record of a past event. In a stark challenge to that convention, Recovering The Past is a photographic exhibition which points its viewer firmly towards the future.
Its depiction of two distinct groups of men with origins a century apart, but united through a tragic conflict, conveys a striking and sensitive message of post-conflict achievement and resolution. Do the images reveal a team-effort? That’s for you the exhibition viewer to decide, but many visitors believe so.
In-line with artist Ian Alderman’s insistence that this project be approachable to all, scenes of war itself do not appear in this exhibition. A timeless photographic project, Recovering The Past occupies a truly unique place with its depiction and telling of a little-appreciated human-story.
“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.