June 1944  /  D-Day

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Arromanches in Normandy in France was part of the large landing beaches of the Allied invasion against Hitler's Germany in June 1944. The landing was hell for the soldiers.

The D-Day garden in Arromanches is a tribute to the veterans of this battle. The soldiers depicted are assembled life-size from thousands of individual metal discs.

I interpret my impressions in my pictures. The picture field is filled to the brim with a jumble of people, shadows, material and movement. A chaos that bursts the edge of the passe-partout.

The Rommel asparagus, defensive spears rammed into the ground, pierce the picture and the sky, stabbing the people. There must be no place in the entire picture field that radiates calm.

The sculptures themselves look like medieval armor and ketches, like a martial culture with tradition. But the soldiers are riddled with holes from the hail of machine gun fire. Automated dying, mechanized death. Thus the images are filled with holes that repeatedly flash up in the picture like coin fire.

I chose a metallic blue and gray for the picture color. The people disappear in light and mist towards the edges of the picture. The action dissolves in over-brightness, while the scenes themselves are still taking place at dawn.

The sculptures were created by
John Everiss. They stand for themselves.