Born in Eastleigh in the South of England, Alderman has been London-based for more than thirty years.

Extensive experience as both a photographer and digital artist has given Alderman the broad, practical knowledge required to produce a technically challenging project such as Recovering The Past.

Working alongside the personnel of the Belgian armed forces bomb-disposal team for this project has provided Alderman with a unique insight into the legacy and clearance of unexploded ammunition from a former war zone. The risks endured by those who live and work on the Great War’s former Western Front has been laid bare in this work.

This self-funded, non-commissioned project of eight years in the making is solely the result of the artist’s own long-term vision and dedication. Alderman’s desire to raise the profile of a plight that has and will continue to affect millions of people world-wide, has produced an exhibition that poignantly reveals the less-appreciated and universal consequences of human conflict.

“In August 1916, my great-grandfather – Henry George Spearing – became a casualty of the Battle of the Somme. Shot in the spine and paralysed from the waist down, the injury was his alone; its consequences were not. 

Invalided home and till his death in 1936, Henry was nursed by my great grandmother Louisa-Jane. Despite having not gone neared the war itself, through her relentless dedication to Henry over a twenty year period, Louisa-Jane’s own life was intrinsically compromised as a consequence of the war.  

Their shared experience was the inspiration for this project”.

Ian Alderman, London, 2024