The Great War: A Century After, in Pictures
Last year, 2014, marked the hundredth-year anniversary of WWI, what was promised to be ‘the war to end all wars’. Being the first war fought on such a massive scale, it has made a mark of its own in history. Quoting William Faulkner, "the past is never dead, it's not even past." This idea is well captured in American artist Seth Tara’s photographs for the History Channel campaign “Know Where You Stand”, which won the 2005 Cannes Lion award for best brand campaigning. The artist superimposed well-known world war photographs with modern pictures at the exact same locations, creating a shocking visual representation of the continuity and fluidity between the past and the present.
If we were to think of the different points in time as separate parallel worlds, then there would be an infinite amount of events happening concurrently in one single location. It is a strange thought to behold, captured with exactitude by these photographs. Perhaps the piece’s deceptive simplicity may seem to undermine the severity of WWI, but it is precisely this quality of simplicity that highlights the fragility of life, and how much more we need to treasure the little things. We must never forget the pain and grief that war brings upon us. Today, while we are privileged enough to live in the comfort and security of the developed world, war continues to rage on. A simple search would reveal that there are more than fifty armed conflicts still ongoing today, four of which– the war in Afghanistan, the Boko Harem insurgency, the Syrian Civil War, and the Iraqi Civil War––incurred 10,000 or greater deaths in the past year. It is frightening how much we know about history, yet how little we learn from it. It is time now more than ever, to listen to lessons from the ghost of World-War-Past.