An exhibition opening this weekend will offer rarely-seen female perspectives on the first world war and feature photographs by women on the frontline that have never before been exhibited or published.
No Man’s Land will be made up of images taken by women who were inspired by the conflict some 100 years ago but have “historically been excluded”. They include images by nurses Mairi Chisholm and Florence Farmborough, photographs by the UK’s first female official war photographer, Olive Edis, as well as new work by former soldier Alison Baskerville.
Curated by Pippa Oldfield and supported by the Arts Council England, the exhibition will run at the Impressions gallery in Bradford from 7 October to 30 December, before travelling to Bristol Cathedral, The Turnpike in Leigh and Bishop Auckland Town Hall next year.
“Most people think of war photography as images of male soldiers, made by photojournalists in the combat zone,” Oldfield said.
“However, the work in No Man’s Land shows many other ways to photograph war, offering different viewpoints by women who have historically been excluded. I hope visitors will be moved and surprised by what they see.”
Baskerville, who made a series of portraits of present-day women in the British Army for the exhibition, said: “It’s a privilege to be exhibiting alongside such inspiring and fascinating women. Despite the distance of a hundred years, their images are still so raw and powerful.
“As someone who has served in Afghanistan, I recognise the challenges of being a women in a war zone, and the importance of sharing that story.”
Presented as lightboxes, Baskerville’s portraits have a distinctive hazy appearance, made up of thousands of tiny coloured dots that glow. She was inspired by the work of Edis, who photographed everyone from prime ministers to suffragettes.
During the 1918 Armistice, Edis was commissioned by the Women’s Work Subcommittee of the Imperial War Museum to photograph the British army’s auxiliary services in France and Flanders. She took her large studio camera on the road, often developing plates in makeshift darkrooms in hospital x-ray units.
Meanwhile, motorcyclist-turned-ambulance driver Chisholm set up a first aid post on the western front with a friend and, using snapshot cameras, they recorded their intense life under fire at Pervyse in Belgium, just yards from the trenches.
Farmborough documented her experiences with the Russian Red Cross on the border of Galicia (now Ukraine and Poland). At a time when the British press avoided explicit images, she depicted the horrific consequences of war, including corpses lying in battlefields, and offered rarely-seen views of the Eastern Front before fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
A press release added that contemporary artist Dawn Cole was inspired by the chance find of a suitcase in the attic of a family house, discovering the photographs and diary of her great-aunt, a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in northern France.
For the display, Cole uses a many-layered technique incorporating photo-etching, digital manipulation and lace-making, weaving words from the diary into images of lace-edged handkerchiefs and collars, creating photographic prints with hidden messages that “explore the gulf between public face and private feelings”.
Shot at Dawn, by fellow contemporary artist Chloe Dewe Mathews, focuses on the “secret history” of British, French and Belgian troops who were executed for cowardice and desertion between 1914 and 1918.
Mathews’ large-scale colour photographs depict the sites at which the soldiers were shot or held in the period leading up to their execution, showing places forever altered by traumatic events.
