{ chrislip.com/matthew : blog }
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16 July 2007
{ D-Day }
Three years ago, as I walked through the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach in Normandy (site of the allied invasion of occupied France on D-Day), I had almost no emotional reaction. Now, returning to the cemetery and passing the thousands upon thousands of small white gravestones, I couldn't keep myself from crying. It wasn't out of nationalistic pride or gratitude that I cried. Rather, I ached with a more universal grief, a grief that resented my own inability to comprehend.My reaction was even stronger at la Pointe du Hoc, where clusters of tourists weave through mortar craters and shattered cement fortifications, complaining about the weather through forced smiles while they pose for photos next to piles of splintered debris now partially obscured by grass and weeds. To photograph the landscape seems almost redundant, in that it perfectly captures and documents its own sudden, total devastation. Visually, the similarity to ancient ruins is striking; contextually and historically, the contrast is sobering. These are the ruins of modern "civilization," erected and destroyed almost simultaneously.
[ posted by Matthew Chrislip at 17:30 :
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