robert haines
photographer
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My great uncle Simon Haines who was killed on the Somme on September 16th 1916, fighting with the Somerset Light Infantry. He was just 19 and training to be a schoolteacher.
On September 16th 2007 using the original battalion war diary and a British Trench map I retraced his steps outside the village of Flers. I wanted to compare the diary notes with today's landscape. There is no record of his time of death. He was reported as "missing".
I wanted to see if there were any references to the past. I stood on the same spot on the same date. The changing sky was the sky he saw. His views were my views. On that day the sun set in the same spot and at the same time.
I wanted to explore photography's unique capacity to preserve and bring back the dead.
I wanted to know if the camera would see anything of the past, any suggestion of the horrors, or whether the scene implied nothing of its history.
Somme Battlefield Map 1916
Actual trench map used by the Somerset Light infantry. Brown stains are Somme mud from September 1916.
Diane Arbus said:
"Photographs are the proof that something was there and no longer is. Like a stain. And the stillness of them is boggling."
© 2008 robert haines all rights reserved