Battlefield grave memorial, Champagne, France
Like these photographs of German forests devastated by bombing during World War II, Irish photographer Michael St Maur Sheil’s haunting series shows how the scars of World War I continue to linger today.
His series ‘Fields of Battle, Lands of Peace 14-18’ reveals the devastation wrought on the trenches of Europe during the First World War from 1914 to 1918.
Taken over a period of seven years, the images of helmets, unexploded shells and grassy fields pock-marked by bombs are a reminder of the fighting that occurred along the Western Front a century ago.
The photographs are currently on display at the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris as part of a free public street exhibition commemorating 100 years since the end of the war. It will tour the UK and internationally from August 2014 to Armistice Day, November 2018.
View some of the photographs below and find out more about the exhibition here.
‘Iron Harvest’ - unexploded bombshells near Munich Trench Cemetery awaiting collection at the Somme Battlefield, France
Messines located about 400m west of Le Rossignol Farm. On 7 June, 1917, the British exploded 19 mines containing 450 tons of HE under the German line along the Messines-Witjischate Ridge. It was the largest man-made explosion prior to the nuclear era and is estimated to have killed 10,000 men in a matter of seconds.
Trenches and shell holes at Newfoundland Park, Beaumont Hamel, Somme, France
Shell holes and craters at Thiaumont, Verdun, France
The London Irish Rifles Loos Football, which was kicked by the LIR across No Mans Land on 25 September, 1915, as they attacked German troops in the town of Loos in France
[via Feature Shoot, images by Michael St Maur Sheil]