The Fallen

Practically every other day in July 2009, reports came in fast of the rising death toll of fallen British soldiers in Afghanistan. The faces flashed up on screen during news reports and then they were gone, adding to the previous day’s toll. All these soldiers were being compressed into a single unit of measure. Which led me to question, what becomes more important, the individual or the unit of measure they become? I searched for fallen British service men and women from the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq up until the end of July 2009. The portraits were sourced from the MOD website and online newspaper reports. I wanted to create a single image of fallen men and women by reducing each photograph to a thin transparent image layered on top of one another creating a single portrait. One for the fallen in Iraq and one for the fallen in Afghanistan. Inevitably, this led me to look at the other nations involved in these wars. Starting with the United States of America, with their high number of fatalities I needed to find another way of grouping the fallen. Something more than just the location or war they were fighting. These fallen soldiers are grouped by age starting with the youngest of 18 and ending with the final group of 50+. It was harder to find photographs of fallen soldiers from other nations involved in these wars. Some have a dedicated webpage, others were found on memorial websites. Some nations had formal photographs of their soldiers and others were press photographs of photographs taken at their funerals. Ultimately, this becomes reflected in the final outcome of the image. These fallen soldiers are grouped in their respective nations. In the case of a small number of soldiers, I was unable to obtain photographs and to that extent the images in this series do not represent the exact number of fallen within the chosen period.   The men and women who have fallen become unified within an image.   Although they are not clear for us to see them all individually, and they are still very unknown to me, the portraits challenge the viewer to look harder and search for each and every one of them.