The Last Stand

Overview

Over four years photographer Marc Wilson travelled to 143 locations along the coastlines of the UK, The Channel Islands, Northern & Western France, Denmark, Belgium and Norway to capture the photographs making up his new book The Last Stand. The Last Stand documents the physical remnants of war in the 20th century in the UK and Northern Europe. By photographing remaining man-made military defence structures situated around their coastal areas, which now sit silently in the landscape, imbued with recent history, Wilson has created a permanent photographic record of the past.

Reviews

"It's large format work and it's quite beautiful (Paul Virilio's Bunker Archaeology may be the most recognised photography of sea defences but that's a different kind of book) . Everything is shot in subdued diffused light, the pre-dawn it looks like much of the time, and the way in which the different defences merge and crumble into the landscape of which they are now part . . . . The Last Stand is as multi-layered as the landscapes which it features; there's historical detail wrapped folded over into a chronotopia of functional brutalism, mixed with local touches that feeds into the geological, panoramic and tactical. All the boxes are ticked in Robert Adams traditional landscape list: there's geography, autobiography, and metaphor. But on top of that, Wilson gives us a politicised view of landscape and power that ties back to survey photography of Timothy O'Sullivan and the work of Mitch Epstein. Layered into that is an Arcadian vision. With its focus on Northern Europe it's a dystopian Arcadia; there is a pagan feel to Wilson's pictures, a syncretic vision where geology, flora, climate and war find a single expression. And it's beautiful." —Colin Pantall, photographer

Author Biography

Since 2010 Marc Wilson has been photographing the images that make up The Last Stand. This piece of work aims to reflect the histories and stories, military conflict and the memories held in the landscape itself.