In Memoriam

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This is the sort of thing you will never see in Australia, New Zealand, America or Canada, a small, discreet, public memorial to war. There are war memorials all over the world, they didn't call them 'world wars' for nothing. Every town and village in Australia has it's memorial to those who didn't come back. But this is different: a memorial to those who died when the war came to them. I took this simple snapshot on the platform of Middlesborough Station, Yorkshire, UK, in November 2006, and to look at the classic 19th century architecture, dressed-over with late 20th century glasswork, screens, automatic doors and all, was to realise that the same building was the one bombed on that day in 1942. People dressed differently, thought differently, did things for different reasons and the details of their lives were, well, very different. But it was right there that it happened, and that reminds you of both the flow of time and your own mortality. The image was sharpened and brightened a little for publication. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

The Lighthorseman

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The Lighthorseman is one of many war memorials around Adelaide -- and one of the better known ones. More than any other memorial, this statue recalls and honors Australia's cavalry tradition, which is quite the equivalent of that celebrated by the United States. (There's actually another memorial, about a half mile away, on the corner of the Adelaide parklands, where green fields stretch away from the city: it's a plain, solid stone horse trough, and it's the memorial to the horses who served, and died -- it's not so well-known, nor so photogenic, but that's the one which brings a lump to the throat of horse-lovers, like myself.) This image was very difficult to capture, because of the sun angle: the challenge was to get detail from the soldier's face to appear, at the same time as correctly exposing the rest of the shot. The photo was then cropped and sized -- you may not realize there's a set of traffic lights just out of frame at bottom left! And quite a lot of enhancement was done at the software stage, to make the most of this dramatic picture. Photo by Mel, 2007.