Major Project – new idea!

After the conflict photography presentation, I thought it would be interesting to discover more about my grandfather’s experiences in the war and create a piece of work for the main project over the summer. I’m thinking it would take the shape of a photographic journey, retracing his steps and revisiting the locations where he served and fought, which were mostly in the deserts of Inner Mongolia. I’m not sure if it will be possible, but it would combine well with a project on my English grandfather’s war experiences, a Devonshire man who also came from a simple rural farming community and ended up fighting in a distant desert in North Africa. I’m just not sure if I’ve got the funds to do both this year…

This project will be fascinating for me personally, but I’ll try to think hard about an approach to the project so it doesn’t turn out to be a very private and self-absorbed piece of work. Hopefully I can come up with something that has a bit more to say than the usual retracing of family histories that you often see.

In the meantime I’m just trying to collect as much information as possible. On the Japanese side, I’m waiting on the Japanese military archives for the battalion field reports and the reason my grandfather left the war early and I should find out more about my English granddad from my gran who I’m seeing this weekend.