Requiem - lives lost in the East Anglian Landscape

If you’re not willing to see more than is visible, you won’t see anything.

Ruth Bernhard, Photographer

Landscapes can be deceptive. Sometimes a landscape seems to be less a setting for the life of its inhabitants than a curtain behind which their struggles, achievements and accidents takes place. For those who are behind the curtain, landmarks are no longer only geographic but also biographical and personal.

John Berger, Art critic, poet and painter

Hidden in the sweeping folds & sinews of a familiar and occasionally unremarkable landscape of Eastern England, are places where many military aircrew met sudden, violent & tragic ends. During World War Two a vast number of aircraft crashed due to accidents, combat and mechanical failure. These aircraft came from some of the hundred airfields that once dotted the Eastern region, an area chosen for its strategic proximity to the continent. These airfields and the stories of both the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Force have become an intrinsic part of the history and heritage of Eastern England. Though it’s still possible to find the fragmented and tangible remains of these airfields, the sites and stories of the many plane and crew losses are virtually unknown. The scale of aircrew deaths run into many, many hundreds.

We pass these liminal spaces everyday, ignorant of the trauma that once occurred there. The story of sacrifice and loss are hidden, as no physical evidence remains. Rarely an on-site memorial informs the passing traveller, but these are few in number. Those memorials that do exist use vague terminology such as ‘near this place’ or ‘in this parish’. Some are tucked away in churches, detached from the crash sites themselves. Photographing these sites is an act of memorilisation and it is this projects aim to create an intimate connection between story and place, for beyond the tangible lay the distant echoes of lives cut short.

Latest project news, partnering with the American Library Memorial to the 2nd Division, 8th Airforce.

I have been granted permission by the American Library in Norwich to incorporate the letters of United States Army Airforce navigator, 1st Lt Rodney Barton Ives. These letters are part of the USAAF 8th airforce archive kept in the library. These personal letters provide a poignant insight into the life of a serving airman. I will be using excerpts from these letters within the completed work. I have been invited by the library to exhibit this work in September 2025 in The Forum, Norwich, as part of the anniversary commemorations of the end of World War Two.

The American Library can be found at www.americanlibrary.uk

The project began in early 2023 and is ongoing. The completed project will incorporate all crew names.